Written by Ruth Raffle.
I bought a bag of apples from the shops today. When I got them home and opened
the bag, the smell of rotten fruit filled the air around me. I recoiled, before searching
for the bad apple. It can be hard to distinguish which of the apples in the bag is
rotten when they have been trapped inside the same space. The bag encourages
the rot to spread. Anyway, I found the apple and threw it away, along with the plastic
bag. I washed the rest of the apples and put them into my fruit bowl, good as new.
On the 3rd of March 2021, Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and murdered by
Wayne Couzens, a Police Officer. On the same day that Wayne Couzens pleaded
guilty to the charges, the UK’s most senior police officer at the time Cressida Dick
made the comment that there was an occasional bad person in the police force.
In 2023, the charity Refuge, campaigning against gender-based violence delivered
1071 rotten apples to Scotland Yard to symbolise the 1071 allegations that were
being reviewed in relation to violence against women and girls at the hands of the
Met police.
The narrative of one rotten apple amongst many frames the problem as being down
to a few bad people. It suggests that there is an easy distinction to make between a
good and bad police officer. It completely fails to acknowledge the systemic
problems that cause the apples to rot. It does not allow for the idea that perhaps it is
not simply a few bad people, but instead a bad environment which causes and
perpetuates harm. Police are, after all, not comparable to the apples in my fruit bowl.
It is not as simple as throwing away the bad apple and washing the rest clean.
The environment within the police force is one riddled with sexism and misogyny,
with behaviours such as ‘hinting that sexual favours may lead to preferential
treatment’ alongside ‘ostracizing of those who challenge [poor behaviour]’ (College
of Policing, 2024, pp.1-2).This everyday sexism can then escalate into more severe
forms of violence. The police are assigned power over other people to arrest and
control behaviour. This power has the potential to be, and has been demonstrated to
be (as in the case of Wayne Couzens) used to harm marginalised communities.
Following the wide media coverage and discussion regarding the murder of Sarah
Everard, the Met Police launched the Baroness Casey Review, a yearlong
investigation which found severe institutional failings amongst the police force. It
found systemic racism, homophobia and sexism rooted within the functioning of the
Met Police, and highlighted a failure to protect women and children. Police
responses to domestic violence calls provide a good example of this systemic failing.
HMIC (2014) produced a report reviewing all police forces in England and Wales in
their response to domestic violence, finding serious weakness in services provided
for victims of domestic abuse which have the potential to lead to harm. Whilst police
and crime commissioners have placed domestic violence as a priority on their Police
and Crime Plans, this does not transfer into action (HMIC 2014). The report found
that officers lacked knowledge and skills surrounding how to engage with victims
confidently, alongside weakness shown in evidence collection on scene.
Management was also found to fail at reinforcing appropriate actions and attitudes of
police officers. This points to systemic sexism within the police force due to the lack
of prioritisation and protection of women.
Alongside this failing of police to respond adequately to instances of domestic
violence comes the question of whether arrests are the best responses to domestic
violence callouts. Minority communities such as Black and migrant women are less
likely to call the police in cases of domestic violence due to language barriers,
general distrust in police and fear of the arrest and incarceration of their abuser,
potentially leading to their own homelessness, loss of child support or deportation
(Belur 2008; Gruber, 2020). It is therefore impossible to separate the police system
from the justice system, where we can see that minority communities are
overrepresented in the prison population, with Black people making up 13%,
comparative to only 4% of the UK population (Ministry of Justice 2020 p.3; UK
Government, 2022).
This paints a bleak picture of policing in the UK. When we move away from the idea
of a few bad people, we are confronted with the reality of many systemic underlying
problems which seem much harder to solve. However, what if instead of grappling to
fix a flawed system which has institutionally ingrained failings, we look at how we can
start again? What if we begin to imagine a world where policing is not needed at all?
Perhaps this is where the hope lies.
I find great solace in reading abolitionist literature with visions of a future without
systems of policing. Abolitionist feminists encourage us to be both critical and
hopeful about the world we live in, using community-based approaches to activism,
advocacy and scholarship to build this future. Rather than investing more funding
into the policing system, abolitionists argue that our focus should be on changing
attitudes and working within communities. Groups such as Abolitionist Futures and
Sisters Uncut in the UK provide examples of what abolition might look like, focusing
on redirecting funding from the police, to domestic violence and social care services.
It is when we begin to ask these questions and imagine new futures that we see how
possible a world without policing is.
I encourage you to imagine this better world. Let us move away from narratives of
individual rotten pieces of fruit and understand that the whole orchard is rotting. We
must plant new saplings and encourage their growth together. We must begin
anew.
Bibliography
Belur, J. (2008) ‘Is policing domestic violence institutionally racist? A case study of
south Asian Women’, Policing and Society; 18(4):426-444. Available at: DOI:
10.1080/10439460802349312 (Accessed November 27, 2024)
Casey. L. (2023). The Baroness Casey report. Available at:
casey-review/update-march-2023/baroness-casey-review-march-2023a.pdf
(Accessed: November 12, 2024).
College of Policing (2024). Applying behavioural science to sexism and misogyny.
policing/applying-behavioural-science-sexism-and-misogyny (Accessed: 25
November, 2024).
Davis, A.Y. et al. (2022) Abolition. Feminism. now. United Kingdom: Penguin.
UK Government (2022) Population of England and Wales. Available at:
and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest/ (Accessed: 27
November, 2024).
Gruber, A. (2020) The Feminist War on Crime California:University of California
Press.
HMIC (2014) Everyone’s Business: Improving the police response to domestic
violence. Available at: https://assets-
to-domestic-abuse.pdf (Accessed November 25, 2024)
Ministry of Justice. (2021) Statistics on Ethnicity and the Criminal Justice System
2020, Available at:
ment_data/file/1037903/Statistics_on_Ethnicity_and_the_Criminal_Justice_Sysytem
_2020.pdf (Accessed 27 November, 2024)