Hi, I'm not sure if any of you have read Murder in the Tool Library (a quite good solarpunk murder mystery, I think) but I'm working on a story with an investigation and I'm wondering how close AE Marling's answers are to being a drop-in solution for that particular concept, and sort of whether it passes basic scrutiny by anarchists.
If you haven't read it, the basic idea is that the setting's eutopian city doesn't have a police force but it does have a large and active civilian investigative society which normally investigates more mundane situations but can be temporarily empowered with access to additional information by the community on a case-by-case basis, such as when someone is murdered for seemingly no reason. They lacked any sort of qualified immunity and the community seemed to have an existing system based around rehabilitation and restitution that they answered to. It seemed to be very croudsourcing-oriented but members had to pass a fairly-strict qualification process to screen out those who would misuse their access.
They also seemed to have a much broader scope of what they normally investigated than the modern day police do (finding lost pets and such), as crimes seemed to be much more rare in the setting, given the other safety nets available to catch things earlier.
So I suppose most of my questions are around does this seem viable to you? When I asked some of these questions on the xmpp channel it was pointed out that an organization charged with investigating crimes outside its own members but at least nominally accountable to the community is police under another name, which is probably fair. So I guess my question boils down to: are there anarchist answers to how to do policing?
The anarchist manifestos I've tried seemed to be listing all the problems with modern police, which I agree with, and saying that if you solve all of society's other problems you won't need police, prisons etc. which, I don't really doubt that but it also doesn't feel attainable to me. Especially when one of my most frequently-reused comments over on the subreddit is explaining that yes you can still have conflicts (and thus story plots) in a better, more eutopian society. All kinds of crimes, shortcuts and disagreements can arise without desperate necessity and even between people who 95% agree with each other.
So is there a halfway-to-utopia answer?
Part of the trouble is that though my story centers around an investigation (a treasure hunt for thousands of tons of industrial waste illegally dumped decades earlier, and a modern day conspiracy to cover it up and block the investigation), I have a lot less room for deep dives into the organization itself. Marling was able to devote much of his story to exploring a lot of concepts and nuances around the abolishment of police and prisons, how they try to screen for people with sociopathic or abusive tendencies and how the investigative society still has some hierarchy which puts it at risk to people who prioritize ladder climbing and power, (long with the nuts and bolts of how things might be done when the worst case scenario happens and someone commits murder despite all the other social safety nets).
So thanks for reading my question, and for any thoughts you might have. I guess I'm wondering if this existing idea seems basically viable, and what specifics you'd want called out where I can fit them. If you think it doesn't work, I'd be very interested in any alternatives (and I'm happy to read relevant articles, screeds, manifestos etc!). Thanks
All really great points. They sparked one more thought. I really like overlapping authorities, so people have options. I think that’s important in a non-hierarchical/non-coercive society. At first, it seems easier to imagine overlapping investigative organizations, since different interested parties could request their own investigations and reports/evidence from each could be presented to a consensus-based decision-making body.
So then I wondered, how would overlapping use-of-force groups work? Groups could have different methods, maybe some but not all rotate their force-using agents, have different rules of engagement, etc. But I’m also wary of the idea of multiple independent militias, since if groups can decide for themselves to use violence, that could descend into problematic vigilantism. I think there are ways to make it work more accountably, though. I remember that FA has multiple overlapping civil defense groups, but I forget the details of how they’re called to action, so the thoughts below might be exactly what’s already envisioned in the FA world (apologies if so!)
I think the key issue is, if we want people to have different options, who has the choice? It can’t just be whoever has a complaint against someone else, of course. That part is important in determining whether some response is necessary, in a specific incident. But in general when we think about multiple options for authority in an anarchist society, I think what’s really important is that people agree to be subject to them. And with violence, I think that means that the potential target of the violence needs to be able to choose who can use force against them.
Now, that wouldn’t work if a person can say in the moment, for any given act of violence, no I don’t agree to this person restraining me right now. But I wonder if we could have a system in which all community members are able to register their preferences ahead of time, pre-specify which civil defense group(s) or enforcement agency(ies) they consent to be handled by if needed.
They can’t say no to all available groups (that’s the same as not registering any preference), and their wishes are most likely to be followed if they specify one or more large-enough, respected and responsive groups in their local area who can be called in when needed. If a person hasn’t specified any groups, then by default any group can be called in. Also groups might be called in to respond to an incident when at first the parties involved aren’t identified.
If a person is then identified, and they have registered opposition to being policed/enforced by the group on scene (and their preferred group is also available), then (to maintain the group’s reputation) the on-scene responders would have an obligation to make every effort to remain physically disengaged from the non-consenting person as they can, perhaps just maintaining a perimeter and clearly warning the persons that they may have to engage if the person does not remain within the perimeter, until the person’s preferred response agents arrive on scene.
The on-scene responders could still talk to the present parties, seek to de-escalate the situation without physical force, and might be able to gain a target’s consent to bring them in, if their preferred response group is delayed. Groups that don’t maintain enough registered community members voluntarily submitting to their enforcement practices could have their license to use force revoked (so they couldn’t respond even to the open calls for civil defense).
Anyway, as I write this, I am thinking this might already be how the system works in FA. If so, I’m glad! Helps to think it through, to get on board with it :).