The Crisis of Policing in a Neoliberal Era

On July 9, 2021, outside her home in Salem, Oregon, Misty Castillo called 911. Inside was her mentally ill son, Arcadio Castillo, who was “high” and agitated. She told the emergency dispatcher that her son was “drunk, high, and mentally ill.” Arcadio was wielding a knife. Misty, however, wanted the police to know and take account of his mental state. The police responded to the call and showed up in less than five minutes, at which point they burst into the home and shot Arcadio dead. Misty claimed that the officer “didn’t try to calm him down. He just came in and immediately shot my son.”

This incident might be an “unfortunate” use of excessive force. In truth, this kind of incident is not as uncommon as we might imagine. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed in an encounter with the police. Further, these individuals are the victims of nearly half of all fatal police shootings. The numbers are even higher when we combine mental illness with racial and class-based marginalization. Quite simply, the reason for this is to be found in the nebulous re-drawing of police mandates in light of the rise and consolidation of neoliberalism. With the de-institutionalization of mental illness, the police have been put into the position of being front-line responders to mental health crises. This role used to be handled, at least more often, by medical, psychological, and social work professionals. Now it is handled by the police, who are not experts in the field of mental health.

Further, the police, trained to use violence within a subculture that often sees members of the marginalized public as a threat, are woefully unprepared to deal with such crises. This creates two interrelated problems. First, those who experience mental illness have become regular targets of police violence. This results in unnecessary violence and suffering for these individuals and their families. Second, it works to de-legitimize policing as a practice since the communities and individuals seeking aid from law enforcement become its victims. As the rates of unjustified police homicide seem to remain steady (but may, in fact, be ever-increasing), numbers that reflect public trust and confidence in the police have seen a steady decline. The inability of the police, in other words, to handle situations like that of Arcadio Castillo, is effectively undermining their ability to do their job properly. If the police cannot gain the public’s trust, then policing will become an increasingly difficult enterprise. This crisis will likely grow and widen as long as this expanded and problematic role of neoliberal policing is not challenged.

The two main issues that perpetuate this problem in the present situation are: 1) the historical rise and staggeringly stable prevalence of neoliberal approaches to policing; and 2) the training and mandate of the police in terms of a broader debate over crime control policy.

To begin with the first concern, the greatest change in policing since its inception has been the rise and entrenchment of neoliberalism. With neoliberalism, the state’s role in easing the ravages of capitalistic inequality was severely scaled back. As the state withdrew from the “care and management” of “troubled populations” and “dangerous classes,” the mentally ill were de-institutionalized. Taking advantage of the progressive language of the anti-psychiatry movement, institutions were closed, and laws to protect the rights and freedoms of those who struggled with mental health increasingly became law. The populations released from the defunct asylums either fell into the care of their families or, for those without such supports, became increasingly homeless. Undoubtedly, the ravages of substance addiction and other mental health concerns are an ever-present problem in contemporary society. Further, we have left the police as front-line managers of this population.

The second issue blends into the present-day and the question of what we can do to alleviate the problem. Can the police, who are ineffective and inadequately trained to deal with these social service issues, be trained better? To reform the police requires, in truth, a radical restructuring of its entire mandate. Either one of two options are available. The police can become better handle the “troubled populations” through better training. They can become mobile social workers that can assess, for example, the appropriate response, guide treatment assessments, and de-escalate within a therapeutic framework. Alternatively, we could limit police to specific roles and employ street-ready social workers, with or without policing powers. Recent calls for “de-funding” the police have largely failed because of their inability to translate this slogan of radical transformation into a viable and fully articulated plan.

According to Habermas, a legitimation crisis emerges when administrative institutions lose public confidence while retaining their legal authority to govern. This can be explained as a gap between a legal authority and the confidence expressed by the public in that authority. It aptly expresses the crisis in contemporary policing wherein the police retain a wide range of powers associated with using of force combined with a lack of confidence that this force is being used justly.

Agamben’s thought can help us to see how this legitimation crisis of policing exists within a context of a state of exception. It seems that the rules of normal legal authority and its functioning are suspended in the case of marginalized communities. Robert Peel, the so-called founder of modern Anglo-American policing, argued, in his Nine Principles, that “the public are the police, and the police are the public.” This principle was meant to emphasize the idea that, in a liberal democratic society, the best form of social order involves the mobilizing public support for the mandate or goals of policing. This is especially the case in marginalized communities, such as the “dangerous” working classes of Peel’s day.

When the goals of policing become opaque and confused and when police officers act without any consent or knowledge of the communities that they are policing, then a legitimation crisis emerges. That crisis is growing and threatening the peace of the social order. According to Habermas, any lingering legitimation crisis is bound to affect the functioning of the legal system overall and the political role of democracy. Can a society be considered a democracy when it regularly turns its most violent defenders against the most vulnerable? Can the public ever be the police when a significant portion remains in the crosshairs as Arcadio Castillo was? Another unfortunate victim of a failed neoliberal policing strategy.

The Current Events Series of Public Philosophy of the APA Blog aims to share philosophical insights about current topics of today. If you would like to contribute to this series, email rbgibson@utmb.edu or matthew.clemons@stonybrook.edu.

Paul A. Brienza

Paul Brienza teaches in the Human Rights and Equity Studies department and the graduate program in Socio-Legal Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. His areas of teaching and research specialization include political philosophy, the origins and history of human rights, and legal philosophy.