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HOW PUBLIC HEALTH INSTITUTIONS CONTRIBUTE TO POLICING AND PRISONS
Public health institutions contribute to state violence through collaborations with law and immigration enforcement, and using policing-like tactics in public health systems.
There is a long history of collaboration between public health entities and the criminal legal system, including, but not limited to:
- organized efforts to share public health data with law enforcement entities
- deputizing police to enforce public health or provide health/social services
- participating in mandatory reporting systems that increase criminalization and vulnerability of survivors of violence, children, and families
- sharing the results of drug, HIV, etc. testing with law enforcement and family regulation systems
- relying on policing and criminalization as primary strategies to address public health problems such as gun violence
- participating in forced sterilization and eugenics of people in prison and immigrant detention
- offering public health methodologies that increase the scope, size and legitimacy of policing institutions e.g. “hotspot” policing, “trauma-informed” policing, "community" policing
- relying on law enforcement as a primary strategy to address gun violence, community violence, and other forms of violence
- public health research that uncritically builds the evidence base for policing tactics that we know are harmful for communities and condones policing as a viable response to social problems, etc.
- public health departments that inspect prisons, jails, and detention centers and rubber stamp the abysmal health conditions that are ubiquitous in these institutions
- hiring armed police to staff public health hospitals
- operating with a default acceptance that law enforcement are neutral or crucial community partners in social services
The intentions of such collaborations are typically to build a more effective public sector or a more compassionate or “healthy” criminal legal system, but result in increasing harm by validating and expanding policing/prison’s role in society. These collaborations create health inequity by disproportionately impacting Black, Indigenous, and other people of color — particularly those who are women, queer, and trans/gender non-conforming.In addition to collaboration with criminal legal systems, historically, public health has also participated in the medicalization and pathologization of structural, social issues and non-normative ways of being. In recent years, there has been an intentional shift from focusing on individual and behavioral “risk factors” to working on structural change and systems transformation. Resources in this section offer examples of ways that public health has contributed to carceral forms of social control. You will find more examples of this throughout this guide. Updated 2.23.22.Selected Resources
- Advancing Public Health Interventions to Address the Harms of the Carceral System, American Public Health Association
- Policing the Pandemic: How Public Health Becomes Public Order, Policy Press
- Dismantling Public Health’s Complicity in State Violence, Science for the People
- Abolition is Public Health: Health, Carcerality, and Surveillance, Do No Harm Podcast
- Criminal Justice and Public Health Approaches to Violent Crime: Complementary Perspectives, Geography and Public Safety: A Bulletin of Applied Geography for the Study of Crime & Public Safety
- The Problematic Role of Public Health in Washington, DC’s, Urban Renewal, Public Health Reports
- Public Health and Social Control, Northeastern University School of Law
- Guess Who’s Tracking Your Prescription Drugs?, The Marshall Project
- Police State, Banishment and Data-Driven Policing, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
- Disrupting the Medical Industrial Complex, Healing Histories Project
Discussion Questions
- It is crucial that we as a field are accountable to the ways in which public health has contributed to increased police presence, surveillance, and incarceration in many communities across the US. What are ways that you have seen this happen in your own community or your work in public health?
- How could the same public health goals be met in ways that do not rely on or expand the role of policing, prisons, and punishment?
- How do policing, prisons, and punishment impede your work as a public health professional? How could dismantling these systems advance public health goals?
- Review “A Web of Control” by Paul Kivel and try to answer the question: “"Is the work you do part of the buffer zone–either taking care of people at the bottom of the pyramid, keeping hope alive or controlling them?"”
Who To Follow
- Prison Policy Initiative @PrisonPolicy
- Dr. Kim Sue @DrKimSue
- DPH Must Divest @dphmustdivest
- Amber Akemi Piatt @AmberAkemiPiatt
- Public Health Awakened @PHAwakened
- Morgan Godvin @MorganGodvin
- Vanessx K Ferrel @vanessaferrel
- Be Heard DC @behearddc
- Kendra McLaughlin @_kejem
- Shakti Castro @MedeaCulpa
For Further Learning
- Reducing Violence Without Police: A Review of Research Evidence
- Characterizing ‘Civil Unrest’ within Public Health: Implications for Public Health Research and Practice
- Ethical Failures and History Lessons: The U.S. Public Health Service Research Studies in Tuskegee and Guatemala
- When Health Care And Law Enforcement Intersect In Trauma Care, What Rules Apply?
- Scientific American: Get police out of emergency rooms
- Medical Industrial Complex Visual
TAKE ACTION
There are many opportunities for public health to reduce the ways in which it contributes to carceral systems; one way is thinking about changing relationships with law enforcement.
1Read the End Police Violence Collective’s Pledge of Non-Collaboration for Public Health and decide if you would be able to take those steps in your work. Engage colleagues in this discussion. Is this a pledge you can take?
2There are campaigns currently working across the country to divest public health departments, schools, and other institutions from prisons and policing. Is there a campaign in your community that you could learn from and connect with?
About TowardsAbolition.com
TowardsAbolition.com is a learning and action guide developed for people
involved in the public health field including students, researchers, and practitioners.
Contact Us
towardsabolitioninpublichealth@gmail.com
Last updated May 2021