Counterpoint: Quality of policing will always reflect society as a whole

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D.J. Tice's Sept. 4 column "One nation, underpoliced, with injustice for all" summarized the views of Harvard University Profs. Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani, who argue that "over-policing is not the problem" but rather "an exceptional kind of under-policing" (emphasis theirs).

America deploys an exceptionally low number of cops relative to homicide numbers and levels of violent crime, Tice conveys from the professors' report in the American Journal of Law and Equality. This leads to more violent crime, fewer crimes solved, longer prison terms for those caught, more violent encounters with police, and, in Tice's words, "nervous cops with a warrior mind-set."

As Tice notes, these "do most of their damage in disadvantaged communities."

Lewis and Usmani recommend that we emulate nations like Denmark and Norway and, as Tice writes, "redirect billions of dollars it spends on prisons to putting more police, lots more police, on the street. Punishment would become more certain (but less severe), and they believe crime, incarceration and police brutality all would decline."

The key takeaway from Tice's column should be that policing always reflects the quality of the overall society in which it practices its craft. For example, Southern states insisted on the right to have a "well-regulated militia" in order to put down slave rebellions. A fair and just society will have better policing. An unjust society will not. Policing in the U.S. will look more like Denmark, Norway and many other developed nations when we face the fact that comparatively the U.S. is at or near the top in terms of inequality and the bottom in measurements of social well-being.

Inequality in the U.S. is associated with lower levels of empathy and trust, social stratification, poverty, poor educational performance, lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, poorer health, more violence and homicides, higher prison rates, and more punitive prison practices.

Lewis and Usmani believe "in the long run, a significant expansion of social policy would reduce crime … [b]ut a significant expansion of social policy [would require] significant redistribution from rich to poor." This is unlikely given "the electoral fracturing of the American working class."

The quality and purpose of policing will always be linked to society as a whole. We can only have Norway's or Denmark's humane policing if we build a fairer, better, more equal society.

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is an emeritus professor of justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas.