A Roadmap for Re-imagining Public Safety in the United States

HRW Report: 14 Recommendations on Policing, Community Investment, and Accountability.

Police violence has a long history in the United States and remains a pervasive problem to this day. As recent research by Human Rights Watch has shown, it is inextricably linked to deep and persisting racial inequities and economic class divisions. For reform efforts to be meaningful and effective, they need to address those societal conditions.

Too often police reform discussions in the United States focus on tactics that contribute to killings. Killings are only the tip of an iceberg of much more common daily interactions between police and Black, Latino, Native American, poorer people, and people with disabilities, that are coercive and often violent, even if they do not result in death or serious injury. Such interactions result in high rates of arrest and criminalization, again disproportionately impacting people from these communities, contributing to mass incarceration and devastating long-term consequences for those convicted and those close to them.

These patterns are themselves a product of generations-old systemic racial inequalities, laws, and policies that have prioritized policing and criminalization as the primary state response to a range of societal problems. They are also the result of an approach to policing in the United States that has too often relied on coercion and force and failed to ensure accountability for abuse. Reform efforts need to address these fundamental problems to be effective.

Human Rights Watch urges that United States police reform initiatives address three critical issues:

• Reducing the role of police in addressing societal problems; 

• Investing in communities to advance public safety and equal rights; and

• Developing independent accountability and oversight mechanisms.

Read the full Report