Resources

Police officers often serve as first responders to mental health and substance abuse crises. Concerns over the unintended consequences and high costs associated with this approach have motivated emergency response models that augment or completely remove police involvement. However, there is little causal evidence evaluating these programs. This study presents evidence on the impact of an innovative “community response” pilot in Denver that directed targeted emergency calls to health care responders instead of the police. Evidence shows that the program reduced reports of targeted, less serious crimes (e.g., trespassing, public disorder, and resisting arrest) by 34% and had no detectable effect on more serious crimes. The sharp reduction in targeted crimes reflects the fact that health-focused first responders are less likely to report individuals they serve as criminal offenders and the spillover benefits of the program (e.g., reducing crime during hours when the program was not in operation).

This brief is intended to help organizers working to stop the violence of surveillance, policing and punishment and advance racial, reproductive, gender, LGBTQ, migrant, and disability justice to:

• make links between criminalization of care for trans youth across all of our struggles;
• understand how we can join the fight to challenge criminalization of trans health care;
• be of support to folks seeking and offering gender-affirming care;
• and connect the criminalization of gender-affirming health care to broader calls to defund police, decriminalize, and divest from surveillance, policing and punishment.

This report comes through collaboration between Mijente, Perry Undem, the Community Resource Hub, and the Center for Advancing Innovative Policy. This report is the first national comprehensive study on Latinx attitudes about policing and public safety in the United States and Puerto Rico. We believe in our gente and our communities, that together we can envision and build futures beyond the constraints of punitive measures. That’s why we commissioned a national study and focus groups, to better understand Latinx experiences and develop strategic organizing interventions and resources. The results tell a story that mirrors the Latinx diaspora as a whole: our gente’s political perspectives vary drastically depending on any number of factors. Still, in analyzing thousands of responses across 11 different focus groups, it is clear that our gente believe that making communities safer is about resources, jobs, and education, not more police.

What is mental health? How can we be more whole and how can we advocate for systems that help all of our community members heal? In this episode, we look at mental health with two practitioners — Iresha Picot and Jacqui Johnson. Listen to their conversation that ranges from trauma to mental health crisis response to hip-hop. Learn about the policy changes that could make city services more just and what we all need to be well.

After the Salt Lake City Council and Mayor ignored thousands of calls to #DefundThePolice last summer, we sent out a survey asking people to rate their priorities for the city’s budget. One thing is clear: the city must change it’s priorities to meet the needs of the people in Salt Lake City. Read the full report for more about our data collection and responses.

A zine in both English and Spanish that outlines the Salt Lake City, Utah, city budget and how it is allocated to policing. It offers a list of divestment proposals and demands as well as a list of investments back into the community, such as supportive housing services, mental health resources, community spaces, and more.

The expanding surveillance and criminalization of mutual aid, self-managed care, and bodily autonomy, and the growing attempts to criminalize pregnant people, parents, and health care providers have far-reaching ramifications beyond abortion criminalization that require us to join together to collectively resist!

Hundreds of restrictive bills have been proposed, many passed, including the Texas law (SB8) that not only bans abortion after six weeks, but deputizes civilians to police each other’s reproductive decisions. Such laws are just the latest examples in a long history of criminalizing bodily autonomy, especially for Black, Indigenous, migrant, disabled, queer, and trans people, and people with low incomes who will experience the harshest impacts of anti-abortion legislation.

This brief offers an analysis of how our movements are connected, and how to push back against a widening web of criminalization.

The STOP LAPD Spying Coalition has been on the forefront in the fight against data-driven policing and surveillance. Their ground-breaking work combines community research to expose surveillance and policing tech, visual and creative tools to demystify new technologies and hands-on organising. All with the explicitly abolitionist aim of building power on the ground to dismantle the carceral technologies of what they have coined the Stalker State. We invited Stop LAPD Spying Coalition members Shakeer Rahman and Hamid Khan to talk about their work and their experiences on research and mapping of surveillance technologies.

This episode examines how news and pop cultural media deputize and urge listeners, readers, and viewers to act as neighborhood vigilantes. We study how this instills a climate of constant, unnecessary fear; presents the current US and criminal legal system as the only option to reduce crime; excludes crimes against the poor and working class like wage theft, food and housing insecurity, and lack of healthcare; and how these systemics can inflict unjust harm upon the subjects of these anonymous tips.