2This article seeks to critically examine this idea of British exceptionalism. It examines how and why calls to “defund the police,” grounded in abolitionist perspectives, challenge dominant narratives of British policing in the context of ongoing debates about institutional racism in the UK. It adopts a qualitative, critical socio-legal methodology grounded in critical criminology. It provides an analysis of academic literature, policy documents, official reports, parliamentary debates, statistical data, and activist writings relating to policing, racism, and abolitionism in the UK and the United States. Rather than presenting original empirical fieldwork, the article synthesises interdisciplinary scholarship with documentary and policy analysis.

3The article makes an original contribution by systematically linking colonial policing legacies to present-day reform debates in the UK. It demonstrates how myths of British exceptionalism—particularly the narrative of “policing by consent”—continue to structure political and institutional responses to racism, thereby constraining the horizon of reform. It also contributes to debates on policing and race in the UK by reframing calls to “defund the police” through the lens of abolition democracy, a concept that has been widely developed in US abolitionist scholarship but remains under-theorised in the British context. Rather than treating abolition as a marginal or utopian position, the article situates it as a coherent democratic project that foregrounds questions of power and legitimacy. By doing so, it moves beyond both reformist accounts of policing and narrowly fiscal interpretations of defunding, offering a novel conceptual framework for understanding abolition as a positive, institution-building process within contemporary Britain. It argues that meaningful transformation requires reimagining democracy itself, rather than further attempts to legitimate policing through technocratic or managerial reform.

4The article is structured as follows. After briefly outlining the meaning of the slogan “defund the police,” it questions the notion of British exceptionalism in policing, demonstrating that calls to defund the police are just as relevant in the UK. The article then demonstrates that, despite some acknowledgement, not least by the senior police officers themselves, there is a problem with institutional racism and suggested reforms are unlikely to address these failings or to ensure that the police can actually keep people safe. This is largely on account of their focus on securing legitimacy, rather than on bringing about fundamental change. The article then examines how abolitionist perspectives might bring about decisive change, highlighting the fundamental issue of power. Indeed, it argues that defunding is pointless without community empowerment that will enable ordinary people to take control of conflict resolution (Vitale; Harris et al.). As key figures in the BLM movement argue, reforms can only succeed if they are grounded in a broader project of radical or “abolition democracy” that shuns exclusionary logics in favour of the development of inclusive and collective practices, fostering a broad conception of justice that is not predicated on punishment but rather on equality, respect and dignity (Davis; McLeod). The article concludes by highlighting the significant challenges to realising this objective in a context of ongoing budgetary austerity and a hostile political environment that denies the existence of racism whilst stoking racial divisions through the so-called culture wars.

From Defunding to Abolition

5It is necessary to provide further clarification of what is meant by the slogan “defund the police.” Firstly, it is essential to note that “simply cutting police budgets does not necessarily signal an end to policing” (Cuneen 3). In England and Wales, in a broader context of budgetary austerity across government departments, central government funding for the police fell by 30 per cent in real terms between 2010-2011 and 2018-2019, contributing to a reduction in the total size of the workforce by 18 per cent over the same period (National Audit Office 8-9). Although police numbers have increased again in recent years, they have still not returned to their peak at almost 172,000 officers in 2010 (Allen). Yet, fewer police does not mean less policing. As Millie has demonstrated, this exacerbated ongoing trends towards “mission creep,” whereby police officers take on “more roles that are traditionally covered by other social or welfare agencies” (2013 149). He argues that the “policification of social policy” occurred as officers were called upon to respond to problems such as mental health issues that are necessarily neglected by underfunded social services.

6Furthermore, policing is no longer confined to “what the police do” on account of the continued expansion of the private security industry (Crawford 173). Whilst discussion about defunding the police tends to focus on state police forces, it ought to be concerned about all those actors who are now involved in policing, especially since their policing functions often go beyond those traditionally accorded to public police forces. Private security agents tend to be more proactive than reactive, focused on plugging security breaches that might occur in the future, especially those that threaten commercial interests (Crawford 174). The public police are now “dwarfed by a substantial private policing sector that includes in-house provision, commercial for fee providers and non-governmental organisations” (Button 223). It is estimated that in 2024, there were over 262,000 people employed in the private security industry in the UK (Statista), meaning that there are 1.5 private security guards for every police officer (Nalla and Gurinskaya 102). Citizens are now more likely to come into contact with private security guards than public police officers on a daily basis, especially as private and public spaces become increasingly blurred (Lister and Jones 283-285). Importantly, accountability is often market-based, designed to serve the interests of those who pay for private security services rather than the interests of the wider public (Lister and Jones 287). Discussion about defunding the police therefore entails confronting questions about who polices beyond traditional police forces. It also entails critically analysing what policing actually is.

7It is often assumed that policing entails keeping people safe, notably by fighting crime. Yet, as criminologist Ian Loader has pointed out, the notion of the police as “crime-fighter” is “a myth, an emotionally seductive and politically tempting myth, but a myth nonetheless” (40). Indeed, research into calls to the police routinely shows that the vast majority of calls concern non-crime related incidents (Cuneen 44). Many crimes are not even reported to the police in the first place. Indeed, criminologists have long noted the existence of a large so-called “dark figure of crime” which is not picked up by official police statistics or even by self-reporting studies (Buil-Gil et al.). Domestic violence in particular is thought to be significantly under-reported (Office for National Statistics). Under-reporting in deprived areas is affected by low levels of confidence in policing, whilst minor crimes in wealthy areas tend to go unreported due to the limited impact they might have on victims’ lives (Buil-Gil et al.). Even when police do engage crime fighting, they are not particularly effective, as demonstrated by low clear-up rates. For the year ending March 2023, just 5.7 per cent of crimes reported to the police resulted in a charge or a summons (Home Office). Furthermore, their crime-fighting role tends to be limited to specific kinds of crimes, namely to street crime, rather than to white collar crime (Sutherland). They thus primarily perform an important “order-maintenance function” which is deeply “conservative, reproducing order acceptable to those with power” (Millie, 2014 54). Those who challenge that order—such as protesters and people from marginalised groups—find themselves disproportionately policed (Neocleous, 2020a; English et al.). The aim is not to control crime as such but instead to send out “a powerful message to its recipient and to wider audiences about who belongs within a society and about their place (or lack thereof) within its extant social hierarchies” (Loader 45). As such, policing can perhaps be better understood as being primarily about social control (Innes 66).

8Understanding that the police exist primarily to control certain populations rather than to guarantee the safety of the population as a whole is central to demands to defund the police. As Angela Davis has noted, policing is primarily about removing “dispensable” populations from society and thus “disappearing the underlying social problems they represent” (41). This line of thinking demolishes the myth of policing being primarily about guaranteeing public safety, showing how it often works instead to undermine safety. For BLM cofounder Patrice Cullors, the police need to be abolished because “they are extremely dangerous and will continue to be” (2019 36). The most blatant way the police can be dangerous is when they cause physical harm, notably what the abolitionist movement Critical Resistance has referred to as “death by policing” (3). In 2023, it is estimated that at least 1,243 people were killed by the police in the United States, 97 per cent of whom were killed by police shootings (with tasers, physical force and police vehicles accounting for most other deaths). Black people are disproportionately killed and, when they are, they are more likely than other victims to be unarmed (Mapping Police Violence). Although these killings obviously attract the most public attention and were the focus of the 2020 BLM protests, many deaths resulting from contact with the police also occur through neglect, especially when police or private security services fail to exercise due care and responsibility with regard to those they take into custody (Cuneen 99).

9In the UK where the prevalence of firearms is much more infrequent than in the US (Small Arms Survey), there were three fatal police shootings in 2022-2023, while the majority of deaths (75 overall) occurred in or following police custody, including by suicide (Independent Office for Police Conduct). “Death by policing” is most likely to affect marginalised and disenfranchised groups who are most likely to distrust the police and are thus often unwilling to call upon them for protection when they are victims of crime (College of Policing 28). Yet, policing can also undermine security for society as a whole. As Loïck argues, “in public discourse (often fuelled by racist stereotypes), only some issues become legible as safety issues, while others—such as traffic safety, safety at the workplace, social security, ecological safety, etc.—are much less prominent” (122). State funding is often funnelled into punitive responses to “policeable issues” at the expense of welfare responses, weakening the institutions which might prevent social disintegration and tackle the social roots of harmful behaviour (Loïck 122). This is why those who call for divestment in policing also call for investment in welfare and public health responses to social problems.

10Indeed, defunding the police is not a stand-alone project. It is not only about dismantling the police. It also entails dismantling the whole apparatus that supports policing. For the abolitionist organisation Critical Resistance, defunding the police entails bringing down the prison industrial complex which refers to “the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems” (Critical Resistance). The racial and economic power of this complex is maintained through the media that demonises marginalised communities, the huge financial profits that are to be made from the security industry, the political gains that accrue to politicians who resort to “tough on crime” rhetoric, and the elimination of social and political dissent (Critical Resistance). Defunding the police must therefore be understood as part of a much wider project of abolition which is central to the BLM movement on both sides of the Atlantic. As activist Mariame Kaba puts it:

Abolition for me is a long-term project and a practice around creating the conditions that would allow for the dismantling of prisons, policing, and surveillance and the creation of new institutions that actually work to keep us safe and are not fundamentally oppressive. (100)

11Abolition should thus be understood as a positive political project. It “is not simply an against… it is also a for”—it is not just about “dismantling oppressive institutions,” but entails “an active process of rebuilding new and more human alternatives” (Maher 17-18). The latter part of this article will explore what exactly this might mean in practice and highlight the challenges that such a project might come up against in the specific British context.

Debunking British Exceptionalism: “The UK is not Innocent”

13British policing is often considered exceptional on account of its model of “policing by consent.” As crime historian Clive Emsley points out, it is widely thought that Robert Peel, founder of the Met in 1829, first articulated this idea when he set up an unarmed police force that appeared to be very different from more militarised continental police forces, but in reality so-called “Peelian” principles of policing were actually articulated around one hundred years later by police historian Charles Reith (11-14). For Reith, the exceptional nature of the English police resulted from it being “non-military, unarmed and non-political” and deriving its authority from below rather than imposing it from above (Emsley 15). Emsley challenges each of these assertions: although the English police did not resemble the military at first, by the end of the nineteenth century, this was no longer the case; although they did not as a rule carry lethal weapons, they often did so when faced with rioters or new threats; similarly, the suggestions that the police were non-political is highly questionable given their undercover investigations into the Chartist movement and the development of Special Branch to infiltrate Irish Fenian organisations and anarchist groups (Emsley 15-16). Furthermore, policing practices varied from one part of the country to the next and, police officers certainly used powers disproportionately against certain “undesirable” sections of the population (Emsley 18-19). Emsley’s account challenges the assumption that there was ever one “benign” British policing model.

14For the “undesirables,” whether in the USA or the UK, policing has never been about consent. Throughout history, they have revolted against police power and been subjected to police violence. Neocleous urges us not to think of militarised policing as exceptional, since policing—whether in England or elsewhere—has always been about violence (2020b 10). Indeed, there can be no separation between police power and war power—the police have always waged wars on citizen—subjects who have been constructed as “objects of threat, as enemies, or as potential enemies” (Neocleous, 2020b 10-13). Even if just 4 per cent of officers carry firearms, those who do tend to display a “warrior street police culture” and are encouraged to maintain order at all costs (Lai Quinlan; Casey). As noted above, English police do kill. And when they do, this often sparks revolt, as was the case following the police shooting of Mark Duggan in 2011, exposing the notion of policing by consent as a fiction.

There are people in the Met with racist attitudes, and Black, Asian and ethnic minority officers and staff are more likely to experience racism, discrimination and bullying at their hands. Discrimination is often ignored, and complaints are likely to be turned against Black, Asian and ethnic minority officers. Many do not think it is worth reporting. […] Meanwhile Black Londoners in particular remain over-policed. They are more likely to be stopped and searched, handcuffed, batoned and tasered, are over-represented in many serious crimes, and when they are victims of crime, they are less satisfied with the service they receive than other Londoners. There is now generational mistrust of the police among Black Londoners. Stop and search is currently deployed by the Met at the cost of legitimacy, trust and, therefore, consent. (Casey 17)

17These problems are not confined to the London Met, but problems in the Met alone are sufficient cause for concern given that this is the largest police force in the country and often considered as a model for others—on account of its size, specialisation and responsibilities (Brown 18). During the parliamentary debate on the day the report was published, the shadow Home Secretary pointed to the noxious culture that exists in other law enforcement agencies including Wales, Scotland, Hampshire and Sussex (Cooper). A culture of misogyny, corruption and racism was also identified within Gwent's law enforcement system (BBC).

18Conscious or unconscious racist attitudes have a significant impact on how police use discretionary powers such as stop and search. As Loïck explains, these powers allow the police to “establish a differential regime of subjectivation,” meaning that they “habitually address parts of the population (standardly people of colour, poor people, homeless people, drug users, sex workers, trans and gender non-conforming people) as potential criminals” (120). In the UK, police officers have long used stop and search powers to make young Black men in particular into subjects to be feared and controlled. Despite constant official warnings about the disproportionate use of these powers since at least the Scarman Report into the Brixton Uprisings/Riots of 1981 (Scarman 46), Black people are today 9 times more likely than White people to be stopped and searched, and 18 times more likely to be subjected to section 60 searches under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which permits time-limited searches in a given area without reasonable grounds (HMICFRS 2021a 6).

19The “differential subjectivation” of Black people has led to them being associated with particular kinds of crime, from the so-called offence of “mugging,” first constructed in the 1970s (Hall et al.), to knife crime, particularly that associated with “gangs” today. The London Met’s “Gangs Matrix,” in operation from 2012 until February 2024, was an intelligence-gathering database which identified and classified those involved in or “at risk” of being involved in gang violence. People could be added to the Matrix simply if they had links via family or friends to gang-related activity—in 2018, it was estimated that it comprised 70 per cent young Black men (Elliott-Cooper, 2021 152). The trawling of social media data, the use of facial recognition technology, AI and algorithms have particularly adverse consequences for people of colour (Cuneen 160). Although the Matrix tool has now been discontinued as part of a plan to bring about a culture change within the Met in the wake of the Casey Report (Metropolitan Police), the use of technology in “predictive policing” aiming to prevent future criminality is now widespread (Marciniak). Furthermore, there are currently no plans to reform the joint enterprise legislation which has been regarded as “a powerful form of collective punishment” for young Black people who form part of a “suspect community” (Elliott-Cooper, 2021 137). The legal doctrine of joint enterprise allows an individual to be jointly charged with the crime of another if it is believed that s/he could have foreseen that a crime was likely to be committed and intended to encourage or assist the commission of that crime. This has been regularly used against young Black people who were seen to be associating with each other to prove that they belong to the same gang (Elliott-Cooper, 2021 136). A six-month pilot scheme led by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2023 to monitor racial bias in prosecutions under the doctrine of joint enterprise found that Black people are 16 times more likely to be prosecuted than White people (Crown Prosecution Service). The disproportionate use of police powers against Black people and other ethnic minorities gives the lie to the oft-repeated idea that the British policing model is uniquely based on consent.

20Another myth about British policing is that is has been untainted by the legacy of slavery and is therefore not inextricably linked with a history of racism as in the US. In reality, the militarisation of policing and the disproportionate use of police power against certain communities must be understood in the context of Britain’s colonial past. If the so-called Peelian model of policing was a myth in England, it was pure fantasy in the colonies. Although policing practices varied across and within different territories in the Empire, they shared a number of common characteristics (Bell 2013), namely: paramilitarism which was integral to the overtly political function of the police in the colonies to shore up imperial power; routine intelligence-gathering to deal with political insurgency; and the use of excessive policing methods such as “illegal raids, pillage and extortion, corruption and mindless brutality” against indigenous populations (Cole 94). Contrary to the discourse of Peelian moderation, these practices were also used in Britain (Brogden). In the context of the conflict in Northern Ireland, the territory was often used as a testing ground for policing strategies which were later transferred to mainland Britain, notably during the Miners’ Strike of 1984-1985. Hillyard highlights key parallels between the policing of that industrial dispute and the policing of the “Troubles”: “the form and style of policing adopted, the centrality of intelligence, the techniques of street control and the use of the criminal justice system to achieve political rather than judicial ends” (1987 178). These tactics were also employed following the urban uprisings in Brixton in 1981—it is no coincidence that the head of the Northern Ireland police became the chief constable of the Metropolitan Police in London, paving the way for them to be mainstreamed throughout England to deal with colonial “suspect communities” at home (Hillyard, 1993; Kundnani 91).

21It is thus clear that the notion of British exceptionalism in policing does not stand up to scrutiny. Historical and contemporary evidence demonstrates that claims regarding the benign and consensual nature of British policing are fundamentally flawed. The idea that British policing is distinctively non-violent, apolitical, or free from discrimination is contradicted by a long history of militarised responses, political interventions, and the disproportionate use of police powers against certain communities, particularly Black and racially minoritised groups. This challenges the assertion that the criticisms and demands for reform voiced by BLM and abolitionist activists are not relevant to the UK context. Rather, the persistence of institutional racism, the continued use of discriminatory practices such as stop and search, and the legacy of colonial policing methods all illustrate the pressing need to engage seriously with these movements and their calls for systemic change. Yet, given the important legitimising function that this myth serves, political and policing elites are particularly concerned about it being undermined by findings of institutional racism. This has led to a variety of reactions.

Legitimising the Police: From Denial to Reformism

22One widespread response to accusations of institutional racism is denial. This was evident in the wake of the 2020 BLM protests. Whilst Cressida Dick, then Commissioner of the Met, claimed that she was listening to concerns raised by BLM, she stated, “I don’t think we’re collectively failing. I don’t think [racism] is a massive systemic problem, I don’t think it’s institutionalised, and more to the point I think we have come such a very, very, very long way” (qtd. in Forrest). Furthermore, the police have not acknowledged the possibility that the policing of BLM protests may have been institutionally racist. A report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary described the policing of the BLM protests as “exemplary” in terms of respect for professional standards, taking as an example the police’s decision not to intervene to prevent protesters in Bristol from toppling the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston (HMICFRS, 2021b 37). Yet, the police came under heavy criticism for this decision by the government. Then Home Secretary Priti Patel reportedly called the chief constable of Avon and Somerset police to demand an explanation, prompting criticism that she was overstepping her role by getting involved in police operational decisions (Syal). Yet, the Home Secretary, together with the Prime Minister, were keen to demonstrate their support for the police who were said to be “under attack” and “subject to the most dreadful abuse” from BLM protesters (Patel; Johnson). They notably ignored calls from BLM to defund the police, with Johnson highlighting the efforts he had made personally as Mayor of London and as Prime Minister to “promote more young black people in the police and in other walks of life,” notably in his own government which he described as “the most ethnically diverse […] in the history of this country” (Johnson). Keir Starmer, then leader of the Opposition and formerly Director of Public Prosecutions, dismissed calls to defund the police as “nonsense,” stating that “nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police,” that he “would have no truck with that,” and declaring his support for the police to be “very, very strong.” For him, BLM was “reflecting something completely different,” suggesting that allegations of police racism were not relevant to the UK (Starmer qtd. in Chappell).

23For the government, the “real” problem with the police is not that it is institutionally racist but that it is neglecting basic policing responsibilities by seeking to project a progressive image. Reacting to a report by right-wing think tank Policy Exchange that questioned the political impartiality of the police and expressed concern about their handling of political protest and their adoption of gestures of solidarity, such as the wearing of a badge on their uniform, or “taking the knee” (Spencer 18-21), Patel reportedly told “woke police” to “get back to basics” (Hymas). Similarly, her successor, Suella Braverman endorsed the claim made by Stephen Watson, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police that policing has become too “woke,” advocating a return to “common sense policing” (Braverman, 2022). When the Casey Report revealed a picture of the Met diametrically opposed to the idea of “woke police,” Braverman responded that whilst the report made “for very concerning reading” and that the Met “has a long road to recovery” ahead, she reiterated her wish that “all forces […] focus relentlessly on common sense policing” and rejected the finding of institutional racism, noting “it is not a helpful term to use; it is an ambiguous, contested and politically charged term that is much misused and risks making it harder for officers to win back the trust of communities” (Braverman, 2023).

24Not only did government ministers deny the existence of problems of police racism highlighted by the BLM movement (Mason and Siddique), but they also sought to delegitimise the movement by depicting protesters themselves as the problem. Following the protests of May and June 2020, Patel lashed out against a “criminal minority” of protesters as “hooligans” and “thugs” (Patel). She argued that attacking statues was as bad as attacking the police, as Patel and other MPs (from both Labour and the Conservative Party) called for the creation of a new offence to punish the vandalism of war memorials (The Secret Barrister). Boris Johnson, Prime Minister at the time, also lumped together those “who attack public property and the police” and stated that they “will face the full force of the law” (Johnson). Patel later stated in a radio interview that “there are other ways in which people can express their opinions, protesting in the way that people did last summer [during the BLM protests] was not the right way at all […] I didn’t support the protests. Those protests were dreadful” (qtd. in Parveen).

25Nonetheless, the government did respond to the BLM demonstrations of 2020 by establishing a Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities led by Tony Sewell, who has been described as “a highly divisive academic with a long history of disavowing the existence of institutional racism” (Elliott-Cooper, 2021 173). The report dismissed the notion that racism could influence the disproportionate use of police powers such as stop and search against Black people, focusing instead on reforms that would purportedly allow more scrutiny of the practice, such as the use of body cameras (Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities 154-165). Perhaps most controversially, it asserted that racial disparities can be explained by perceptions more than reality (Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities 47).

26Other official reports have nonetheless recognised problems of racism within the police and the criminal justice system more generally. For example, in the wake of the BLM protests of 2020, the representation and coordination body for police forces across the UK, National Police Chiefs’ Council, and the professional police training body for England and Wales, the College of Policing, recognised that people “have grounds” to “believe policing to still be institutionally racist,” declaring:

We accept that policing still contains racism, discrimination and bias. We are ashamed of those truths, we apologise for them and we are determined to change them. We have much to do to secure the confidence of Black people, including our own staff, and improve their experience of policing – and we will. We will be held to account and we welcome scrutiny. We hope that in the future, we will be seen as the institutionally anti-racist organisation we want to be, because we took action and delivered on our promise to change. (College of Policing 3)

27In order to foster “an anti-racist culture, values and behaviours within policing” (College of Policing 9), it developed a Police Race Action Plan which focused on ensuring that Black people are “not under-protected” by the police; that they are not “over-policed”; that they are “routinely involved” in the governance of the police service; and that the service “is representative of Black people, and supports its Black officers, staff and volunteers” (College of Policing 10). Whilst the language of the plan is encouraging, notably its discourse of active anti-racism, it is less novel in its concrete plans for police reform. Furthermore, the private security industry is generally ignored in public discussions on the reform of policing.

28Police reforms to ensure that minoritised communities are not under-protected carry their own risks. As demonstrated above, seeking to protect Black youths from knife crime, for example, might exacerbate problems of over-policing once surveillance technologies mark them out as being “at risk” and blur the boundaries between potential victims and potential suspects of such crime (Elliott-Cooper, 2021 152). Secondly, as Vitale points out, when police refer to certain communities as being under-protected, they unquestioningly accept the idea that police are the best agency to respond to social problems, ignoring the capacity of the police to undermine rather than promote safety (51-54). A further problem emerges from the police focus on hate crime. Whilst it is important that the harm of such crimes is recognised, the focus on hate crime perpetrated by individuals is problematic as it tends to depoliticise racial harm, thus deflecting attention from wider structural sources of racism (Elliott-Cooper, 2021 18-19).

29Reforms that seek to ensure that minoritised communities are not over-policed tend to focus on the development of revised codes of practice and police training—the Police Race Action Plan 2022 is no exception. There have been countless attempts to reform police training since the inception of the police, yet problems remain. This might be explained by the wide discretion necessarily given to individual police officers to carry out their duties, meaning that theory may have little impact on practice on the ground. Many officers believe diversity training to be “politically motived, feel-good programming divorced from the realities of street policing” (Vitale 13). Indeed, “use-of-force” and diversity training provided to officers at the NYPD failed to prevent the death of Eric Garner in 2014 (Vitale 10). Furthermore, as race theorist Paul Gilroy pointed out forty years ago, training regards racism as a product of individual bias rather than something that is structurally ingrained in the criminal justice system (Cuneen 71).

30Reforms that seek to eliminate institutional racism by increasing diversity in police forces are similarly futile given that this solution also individualises the problem. As Cuneen notes, “The nature of police power does not change because an officer is a woman or Black” (154). Davis explains that diversity is not synonymous with anti-racism—on the contrary: “When equality is measured in terms of access to repressive institutions that remain unchanged or even become strengthened by the admission of those who were previously barred” (2005). Furthermore, increasing diversity and representation of Black people in the police may not improve trust and legitimacy. As Rowe points out, the performance of the service might be much more important than the profile of those delivering it; the ethnic identity of police officers might be less important for the public than their professional identity; and issues of intersectionality also come into play (128).

31Finally, working together with Black communities—particularly through “neighbourhood” or “community” policing—has long been regarded as an important means of improving police accountability to the communities they are meant to serve. It can be traced back to the Peelian notion of the friendly “bobby on the beat” which is still regarded as central to “policing by consent.” It emerged in the 1960s in the United States in response to the uprisings in Detroit, Watts and elsewhere which exposed the dire relationship between Black communities and the police (Hansford 218). In the UK, “community policing” was revived following urban disorder in the 1980s. The emphasis was to be on crime prevention rather than repression, with police working closely with community organisations to address social problems which were thought to be criminogenic (Bell, 2011 170). Yet, in a context in which individual rather than structural causes of these problems became the focus of political attention, from Thatcher’s Conservative governments through to New Labour and beyond, such policing methods tended to become a means of “soft surveillance” (Chatwin, 1981 27). In the UK, the creation of Police Community Support Officers in 2002 was at the centre of a new neighbourhood policing strategy. These uniformed civilian support officers do not have full police powers, such as the power of arrest, but they can carry out stops and searches and issue fines. They are principally charged with patrolling the streets on foot and talking to members of the public, yet “it is their quasi-civilian status which simultaneously renders them more legitimate in the eyes of the public and makes them particularly effective surveillance officers” (Bell, 2011 172-173). Indeed, whilst the notion of community/neighbourhood policing is intended to make policing more accountable to the community it is meant to serve, it is very much designed from the top down, with communities expected to work within existing frameworks. Furthermore, the full diversity of views within communities is sometimes ignored, carrying the risk that the community can become an extended arm of the State, supporting policies which seek to exclude the “other” (Bell, 2011 173). Indeed, the question of who comprises the community is essential (Hansford 218). Whilst the involvement of members of the community in policing decisions might help to legitimise those decisions, such strategies have been found to do little “to reduce the burden of overpolicing on people of colour and the poor” (Vitale 21) and might even encourage over-policing if communities become “police-centred,” involving the police in ever-more aspects of daily life (Hansford 219).

32It is thus clear that whilst official discourse on reform, such as that represented by the Police Race Action Plan, is encouraging, the reform proposals are not particularly innovative, seeking as they do to build on the same kinds of changes that have been discussed—and partially implemented—for the past forty years and more. Undoubtedly, some progress has been made, not least in raising awareness about problems of racism within the police. Yet, ultimately, reforms have failed to fundamentally change the nature of policing and to prevent police power from falling disproportionately on marginalised and racialised communities. One reason is that, regardless of the best intentions of the police, reform is subject to many external factors independent of the police themselves, not least political pressures to be seen to be tough with regard to the most visible signs of disorder. Another possible explanation for failure is that the reforms proposed are more concerned with legitimation than transformation. Indeed, official report after report state that the overarching aim of reform is to restore trust and thus reinforce the notion of policing by consent. The risk is that by providing legitimation, reforms might “reinforce the centrality of the institution of policing rather than challenging it” (Cuneen 148). Challenging it would entail going beyond “technocratic fixes” (Vitale 205) to fundamentally rethink the very purpose of policing and critically assess its political function, rather than simply accepting the idea that the police exist to protect communities. This is the fundamental aim of the “defund the police” movement. Rather than “reformist reforms,” activists call for “non-reformist reforms” grounded in a broader abolitionist project (Cullors, 2019 1987).

Towards Abolition?

33Defunding the police is considered as a “non-reformist reform” to policing to the extent that it entails a transfer of power from the State to communities when it comes to addressing harm. Reducing the slogan to the sole issue of funding is to misunderstand the movement. Lea and Fleetwood, for example, reject what they see as BLM’s focus on “literal defunding (reduced financing)” of the police in favour of a focus on “radically restricting police powers and autonomy.” Yet, this issue of power is central to defunding demands: defunding is regarded as just one means via which the ultimate aim of reducing police power can be realised. In reality, the fundamental difference between Lea and Fleetwood’s position and that of the majority of advocates of defunding the police is that whilst the former focus on transferring power from police to the State, the latter focus on transferring power from the police to communities themselves. This latter position does not, however, entail a withdrawal of the State which is still considered as necessary to provide funding to community and welfare organisations. It simply asserts that the State should play a significantly reduced role in order maintenance.

34Lea and Fleetwood, together with Loader, are particularly concerned about police accountability. Lea and Fleetwood moot the idea of limiting police autonomy by the appointment of an independent “Controller” who would determine what agency—police or welfare—might be best placed to respond to problematic situations. This would, they believe, avoid the criminalisation of social problems by limiting the role of the police to addressing emerging situations that involve violence or its threat (Fleetwood and Lea 177-178). Importantly, the Controller would be subject to democratic oversight, appointed by city mayors following the input of representatives of community groups (Fleetwood and Lea 178). Similarly, Loader believes in the need for democratic oversight of policing decisions, whilst ensuring that “unpopular minorities” are “shield[ed] from the dangers of majority rule” (Loader 46). Whilst such proposals entail some questioning of the role of the police, they do not question the police’s legitimacy as first responders to violent situations, failing to challenge the assumption that the police’s primary role is “to keep us safe.”

35Calls to defund the police go much further. They entail the empowerment of communities to develop “new imaginings of our public safety” (Cullors, 2016 36). “Safety” is understood much more broadly than being about safety from behaviour that is commonly defined as criminal—it is about guaranteeing social security and keeping people safe not just from interpersonal harms but also from the harms perpetrated by corporations and even by the State itself. The first step in this direction might be to follow Loïck and imagine “law without violence” or “a legal order without the police” (118). This would entail following radical democratic principles to enable self-determination and collective decision-making whereby all members of a community “recognise each other as equal co-authors of binding norms, enabling the individual to develop a subjectivity based on self-affirmation and self-esteem” (Loïck 128). The idea is that rules and norms are collectively and horizontally defined so that each member of the community feels that they have good reason to accept them (Loïck 130). On the contrary, if norms are imposed from above, coercive institutions are required to enforce them. Similarly, Aitchison argues that radical democratic principles can foster strong, inclusive communities in which people are naturally more inclined to police their own behaviour. This occurs notably through mutual recognition of each other’s interests, the development of stronger social bonds, and opportunities for self-fulfilment once basic social needs are attended to (Aitchison 137-138). Questions of legal justice must therefore be closely linked to those of political and social justice. As Scott points out, it is essential to create a new “agora,” a public space where ordinary people can engage in rational and imaginative debate about how to respond to harmful behaviour whilst also focussing on social justice (192). The aim is to create collective norms without coercive policing of those norms—in other words, “an abolition democracy” (Loïck 129).

36The notion of “abolition democracy,” originally advanced by W.E.B. Du Bois, sees an abolitionist project in positive terms. He argued that it was not enough to abolish slavery, but that it was also imperative to create new democratic institutions that would eliminate the structural racial bias in American democracy. Abolitionists such as Angela Davis have drawn on this notion to go beyond a negative project of dismantling the police and carceral institutions towards a positive project of building up new democratic institutions that foster social justice and community resilience. This far-reaching vision encourages us to go far beyond a simple call to defund the police and instead to reimagine democracy itself. Whilst these ideas might be the subject of increasing activist and scholarly interest, the current climate is however particularly hostile, not least in the UK.

Conclusion: Abolition in a Hostile Environment

37This article has sought to situate calls to defund the police within the UK context by drawing on abolitionist perspectives and by critically interrogating dominant narratives of policing, reform, and legitimacy. It has examined how abolitionist ideas, practices and critiques circulate across national contexts, and how they are reshaped by distinct political traditions, institutional arrangements and histories of race and empire. It has demonstrated that calls to defund the police in favour of an abolition democracy are highly relevant to the UK where a colonial legacy has contributed to fostering institutional racism in the British State and its key institutions such as the police—the UK is neither exceptional nor innocent. At the level of policy, the analysis raises questions about the effectiveness of further police-centred reforms and suggests that abolition democracy may provide a useful critical framework through which to rethink safety, power and resource allocation. However, suggested reforms, focused as they are on securing legitimacy, rather than on bringing about fundamental change, are unlikely to address these failings or to ensure that the police can actually keep people safe. Moreover, there is no mainstream political support in the UK for radical change. As highlighted above, both the Conservative and Labour parties in the UK have denied the existence of a problem with either policing or racism more generally. On the contrary, BLM and other movements that seek to challenge the status quo are framed as the problem and depicted as extremists. As a result, far from reducing police power, this is constantly being strengthened in order to counter the threat that they are seen to pose.

38Indeed, in the context of the rise of protest movements following the financial crash of 2008 (Bailey), the Conservative government has responded by strengthening police powers. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022 and the Public Order Act in 2023 allow more restrictions to be placed on protest, notably regarding the level of noise that can be generated; criminalise protest tactics that were not previously considered illegal, such as locking-on; broaden stop and search powers; and introduce tougher penalties. This has led to the unprecedented criminalisation of peaceful protest (Wagner). The legislation was widely considered to be unnecessary given the existing broad powers that police had to control protest. Even former Prime Minister Theresa May raised concerns about extended stop and search powers, especially if they were to be used more widely and disproportionately against certain communities. Yet, the legislation served an important function in populist political terms, allowing the Conservative government to frame the police (and by extension government) as being on the side of the “law-abiding majority” as opposed to the “selfish minority,” thus coming down firmly on the “right” side of the so-called “culture wars,” demonstrating their support for “common sense” over “woke” policing (Bell, 2024). Although the police are meant to be operationally independent from government, it has been argued that “behind the scenes a strong collaboration developed between home secretaries and chief police officers to manage protests and evade scrutiny” (Foot and Livingstone 215). There are few signs that the political function of the police will become less salient in the near future. Whilst the Labour Party in opposition largely voted against the new public order acts, Keir Starmer declared that he would not prioritise their repeal should he become the next Prime Minister, arguing that it is necessary to let the legislation “settle in” (Starmer, 2023). As Prime Minister, Starmer did not prioritise increased social spending nor focus on social security, meaning that authoritarian populism continued to be a useful strategy to construct popular consent. Indeed, real terms public expenditure did not increase enough to remedy years of budgetary austerity, and Starmer made true on his promise to make “law and order” a priority and to increase police numbers (Starmer, 2024).

39It is also worth noting that the UK remains a highly centralised State in which it is extraordinarily difficult to empower communities in any meaningful way. Despite the prevalent discourse of community empowerment, this has often translated in practice into more responsibility with central government continuing to exercise a significant degree of control, adopting quite openly coercive policies towards unpopular groups (Bell, 2015). Experiments in genuine community empowerment remain marginal and attract little support from the mainstream (Bell, 2023).

40Finally, any attempts to tackle racism in the UK are constantly undermined by a government that has deliberately created a hostile environment for migrants and anyone who might be suspected of not having regular migration status, as was demonstrated by the Windrush scandal. Given this hostile political climate, the practical feasibility, scope and consequences of non-reformist reforms and community-led alternatives remain uncertain.

41Further research is needed to examine how harm is addressed beyond the police, how communities experience and negotiate plural and informal forms of policing, and under what conditions genuinely democratic and non-coercive responses to harm might emerge. Rigorous empirical work is required to explore the uneven effects of defunding logics across different social and geographical contexts, as well as the role of private security, surveillance technologies and welfare-criminal justice interfaces in shaping contemporary experiences of control and safety.