Resources

In response to concerns over the potential privacy implications of its gunshot detection technology, ShotSpotter Technologies, Inc. (SST) approached the Policing Project to conduct a thorough personal privacy assessment of its product, ShotSpotter. The primary privacy concern identified was the possibility that the technology might capture voices of individuals near its sensors, and could conceivably be used for targeted voice surveillance. Although ultimately concluding that the risk of voice surveillance was extremely low in practice, Policing Project offered SST a variety of recommendations on how to make ShotSpotter even more privacy protective.

This article argues that, in the face of worsening conditions from climate change, enhanced border enforcement, a growing wealth gap, housing crises, and policing, social movements should focus on expanding mutual aid strategies. Mutual aid projects directly address survival needs, mobilize large numbers of people to participate in movements actively rather than solely participating online or through voting, and offer spaces to practice new social relations. The article looks at examples from efforts for migrant justice, police and prison abolition, disaster relief, and other contemporary struggles and discusses potential pitfalls of mutual aid strategies, such as supplementing and therefore stabilizing existing systems of maldistribution and adopting principles and practices from the charity frameworks that proliferate in capitalism.

This document outlines six broad areas of current political need and opportunity as the US government ramps up the militarization of its response to the coronavirus epidemic. This statement aims to generate further conversation on these points both within and beyond the author organization, as well as to enter the national media conversation on coronavirus response.

This is an analysis of criminal punishment system reforms passed in New York in 2019. The public health crisis of COVID-19 that hit NYC in early 2020 has already had a deep impact on the carceral structures of the city and state. The hope is that this abolitionist assessment of these recent reforms can serve as a durable resource for organizers considering progressive-seeming but carceral state-expanding legislation and policies that come about in their locales, both during this COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

For those interested in understanding the policing responses during the COVID-19 crisis overseas. This is a joint collaboration by Netpol and the Undercover Research Group aiming to collect examples and publish them in daily diary entries, putting them in context by providing some background reading. Now that the government has announced a lockdown of the population backed by police enforcement, this resource intends to monitor the everyday impact of the new policing powers and whether they are used proportionately.

Police in Alabama made 2,351 arrests for marijuana possession in 2016. This study analyzed demographic data about the people arrested, along with arrest locations, in addition to examining broader impacts. The report also includes an economic analysis of the cost of marijuana prohibition, conducted by two economists at Western Carolina University.

A report that describes and argues for a new approach to security culture within broad social movements.

A concise visual and written resource that explains and evaluates Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT), which is the most common type of training law enforcement receives for responding to people with mental illness.

From the Movement for Black Lives policy platform on community control – a report with policy proposals around community control of the police. This report includes an analysis of policing issues in the US and models for creating and implementing Civilian Police Control Boards to create and sustain change.