ABOLITION
EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE
Content Notice: abolition, data justice, municipal politics
Photo Credit: Rob Bennett via NYC Mayoral Photography Office
I think a lot about crime data. I read about it, teach about it, write about it, and talk about it. I have presented on crime data to students, researchers, political campaigns, legal aid organizations, and activists and organizers. From these experiences, I became curious about how crime data gets talked about by abolitionists. When Mariame Kaba asked me to write something about crime data for organizers, it was an opportunity for me to work out some of my thinking on this while also emphasizing how data literacy is useful for political work. I wanted to be in conversation with abolitionists, as many deconstructions of crime data are targeted at those opposed to abolition. We need more attention to how political opposition and crime data may be addressed differently among abolitionists and how this can impact the discourse and organizing. This is something I had been thinking about for a while, including when I conducted, prior to writing this, interviews with abolitionist organizers, lawyers, and writers on how data literacy informs their work. I am grateful to Kaba for encouraging me to write what ended up being this publication and thank Abolition Journal and its working group, particularly Christopher R. Rogers, for giving it a home.
1. VICTIMIZATION DATA CAN STILL BE CRIME DATA.
An important task of abolition is distinguishing victimization from the framework of crime control, which only promotes carceral measures to prevent and address harm and violence. To this end, some look to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Launched in 1973, the NCVS is based on a nationally representative sample and administered by the U.S. Census Bureau on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the primary statistical agency of the Department of Justice (DOJ). Some consider the NCVS an alternative to crime data, particularly the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which is collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and frequently cited during debates about crime patterns. On the surface, the NCVS can appear as a good alternative to crime data as it is based on self-reported incidents of (nonfatal) victimization and survey participation is voluntary. And many of the incidents were not always reported to the police, which can provide valuable information for abolitionists regarding the non-use of police for addressing harm or violence. Yet despite its possible appeal as an alternative data source, the origin of the NCVS is rooted in the U.S. federal government’s support for policing.
The NCVS was originally the National Survey of Criminal Victims, which was undertaken by The Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice established by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. Considered the “first national survey ever made of crime victimization,” the NCVS was administered by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. Ten thousand households were asked about “their experiences with crime, whether they reported those experiences to the police, and how those experiences affected their lives.” According to the survey, “there is far more crime than ever is reported.” Yet the data source wasn’t designed to challenge pro-policing politics as, per the survey, victimization is still equated with crime, and, according to the commission, victimization data can aid policing. Indeed, data about incidents not reported to law enforcement was seen as helpful for reforming the police: “Although the police statistics indicate a lot of crime today, they do not begin to indicate the full amount…better crime prevention and control programs depend upon a full and accurate knowledge about the amount and kinds of crime.” The NCVS’s conflation of victimization with crime continues today, as, per the BJS, “A victimization is a single victim or household that experiences a criminal incident.”
Despite being a pro-policing survey, there are some useful data points in the NCVS for abolitionists to consider. It asks about reported and unreported incidents as well as why the incidents were not reported to the police, experiences with the criminal punishment system, and if self-protective measures were used. This information can be useful for identifying the types of harm and violence people may be experiencing and understanding why they chose not to report to the police or, if they did, how the police responded. Yet too often this type of information is used to try to reform the police, including efforts to “build trust” between the police and the public. What this suggests is that data sources in which victimization is self-reported can still serve as crime data and be used to advance the carceral state, particularly through reforms. Simply, just because the data isn’t collected by law enforcement in an obvious way (I say obvious because the DOJ is involved in this data source via the BJS) doesn’t mean it’s not crime data. And we must always be vigilant about how data about victimization, even when collected by non-carceral entities, can easily be used to advance carceral solutions.
2. FREE THEM ALL.
Opponents of bail reform, defund, or abolition often amplify crime data or share horrific stories about victims of violence. Thus, the cultural work of abolition involves combatting the weaponization of crime data and crafting alternative narratives.
Yet too often combatting the weaponization of crime data involves uplifting the stories of the “relatively innocent”—those unfairly punished or convicted of nonviolent crimes. Or it involves questioning how crime is constructed and pointing the finger at institutions, including policing, as the real perpetrators of violence. We must never stop calling out the structural violence inherent to racial capitalism and policing, and how this violence from above is often legal and not included in crime data. But these talking points do not always address how violence can be perpetrated by individuals and how this can cause harm, may influence people’s definitions of public safety, and shapes people’s experiences in the criminal punishment system in terms of convictions and sentencing.
Critics of the prison industrial complex (PIC) sometimes shy away from discussing what is classified in crime or incarceration data as violent crimes, such as aggravated assault or homicides. When emphasized, it is usually when a data source, such as the UCR, suggests violent crime is down. Yet these data debates, while important, might not be the most effective in shifting public support of policing and the reliance on the criminal punishment system for addressing the harm and violence that people experience. While we should constantly interrogate the political purpose and processes of crime data collection, the numbers may at times indicate real victimization as well as a desire to have it addressed by the police. For instance, according to crime data sources, many of the victims of what gets classified as violent crime are nonwhite, and many report the incidents to the police. Here, the challenge is taking from crime data what is useful for organizing, in this case, that there are numerous nonwhite people who are documented as experiencing violence and who are seeking some help or form of justice, as suggested by their reporting of these incidents to the police. Perhaps some of our criticism of the weaponization of crime data and our alternative narratives may try to speak more directly to them in terms of recognizing harms they have experienced and encouraging other visions of violence prevention, accountability, safety, and support than that offered by the carceral state.
Related, being prepared to talk about violence and those who’ve been accused of or convicted of violent crimes is necessary for challenging crime data narratives. Many rely on discourses of relative innocence to build public support for bail reform, defund, and abolition. In the process, we might amplify the harsh punishment of those deemed relatively innocent or guilty of nonviolent or low-level offenses in hopes of revealing the absurdity of the carceral state. Or we might point out that a significant number of people are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. Yet some of these gestures can render the many people who are incarcerated as “violent” offenders illegible or relatively invisible in contemporary abolitionist projects. Such discourses of innocence can also make it more difficult to advocate for those who have been convicted of violent crimes and/or given life or extremely long sentences. When I interviewed people who organize against the PIC about how data factors into their work, a professor who teaches criminal law and directs a legal clinic said those classified as violent offenders who are trying to get help with their cases are often ignored in abolitionist discourse. One organizer, a survivor of gender and sexual violence who was incarcerated for many years for defending herself, stated, “Let's talk about people with murder convictions, let’s talk about people like myself.” As she succinctly put it, not talking about people with convictions, “that’s erasure of me.”
In her analysis of some of the worrying dimensions of the anti-prison movement, Ruth Wilson Gilmore addresses campaigns that “insist on foregrounding the relatively innocent: the third-striker in for stealing pizza or people in prison on drug possession convictions.” As Gilmore notes:
The danger of this approach should be clear: by campaigning for the relatively innocent, advocates reinforce the assumption that others are relatively or absolutely guilty and do not deserve political or policy intervention. For example, most campaigns to decrease sentences for nonviolent convictions simultaneously decrease pressure to revise—indeed often explicitly promise never to change—sentences for serious, violent, or sexual felonies. Such advocacy adds to the legitimation of mass incarceration and ignores how police and district attorneys produce serious or violent felony charges, indictments, and convictions. It helps to obscure the fact that categories such as “serious” or “violent” felonies are not natural or self-evident, and more important, that their use is part of a racial apparatus for determining “dangerousness.”Others, as a matter of trying to save themselves, must foreground those who have been convicted of violent crimes because that is the legal reality they live with. They cannot afford to only cite data about “nonviolent” offenders or the relatively innocent. Several organizations dealing with the PIC are comprised of or serve individuals convicted of violent crimes and/or serving life or extremely long sentences. These organizations and individuals must grapple with laws and policies associated with violent crime as well as the stigma they receive from society, including from some involved in reform work around prisons, policing, and immigration. In the process, they figure out how to handle their cases, shift public opinion, and wage campaigns for freedom amid an emphasis on violent crime weaponized by politicians, pundits, and policy makers. The efforts of such organizations and projects, like Release Aging People in Prison, Survived & Punished, the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, and Second Look Project New York, may provide models for how to critically engage crime data and its weaponization without relying on a framework that defends the relatively innocent at the expense of those who have been convicted of violent crimes. For those who want to challenge how crime data is weaponized, it can be useful to support such organizations and learn from them the frameworks and vocabulary they employ to defend individuals, organize communities, and advocate for policy and political changes.
3. THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.
While it is useful to be familiar with national crime data, such as the UCR and the NCVS, it is beneficial for activists and organizers to be familiar with local crime data sources. Having data literacy about one’s city can allow us to use that knowledge towards shifting local public opinion, challenging city governments, working towards decreasing police power, building campaigns and coalitions, and practicing abolition as both the absence of policing and the abundance of public goods and services that nurture a positive quality of life.
It is useful to remember that not all states and cities classify crimes the same, nor do they show up the same in crime data. And not all cities make that data easily available to the public. For those who want open data regarding crime and policing in the name of transparency, we should be cautious about the demands we make about data access as it may cause problems for those caught in the criminal punishment system. And unlike most data collection that involves the expectation of informed consent and research ethics, crime data is comprised of information taken from people while under duress and where answering questions may be a life-and-death situation. Given this, we should be cautious about how and why we seek local crime data. And when local crime data is available, one of our purposes should be to challenge the harms of that data collection in terms of how it advances criminalization and policing, particularly of certain neighborhoods, communities, and social groups in the city.
Along with becoming familiar with how local crime data is collected and used to shape policies and crime control measures, more of us should become familiar with data about city budgets as this helps us identify and challenge the funding and labor priorities of city governments. It is commonly argued that the police are not workers, which is an understandable rhetorical gesture meant to underscore the police’s role in defending and maintaining racial capitalism, the amount of protection and deference they receive compared to other workers, and why they should be excluded from unions and the labor movement. Yet the police are, technically, public workers and one of the most unionized sectors in the country, both of which are relevant to understanding how policing often gets a large bulk of city budgets and why some choose it as a career. In addition to understanding how the police are prioritized in budgeting, we should also become familiar with other city services and the financial and labor dynamics of those. This can help us parse out the violence work that is policing from other public work, and the carceral state from the state that we should have. This data can be helpful for trying to shift public opinion and build campaigns that disassociate public safety from the carceral state and move towards a vision of safety, jobs, and labor based on having our needs met. Abolition, after all, involves figuring out what the function of government is and how it can operate to sustain humanity rather than cause harm.
A data source that can be useful for helping us approach such conversations with city leaders and residents is 311 data. Unlike 911, which is the universal emergency number, 311 was developed to request help for non-emergency reasons. On its best day, 311 reflects a belief that the government should be more aware of and connected to residents and their needs. First adopted as a system in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1990s, 311 is now available in numerous cities. When available to the public, 311 data can be a useful resource for identifying what people think their needs are. Some 311 data shows calls from tenants dealing with the quality of their living conditions and negligent landlords. Some calls reveal a lack of parking in terms of reports of cars blocking people from leaving their driveways. In other cases, data shows people overhearing arguments or fighting. Some 311 data sources show us where these calls get routed and which are sent to the police. Taken together, 311 data can reveal what people think they need help with, what they can’t or think they can’t accomplish on their own, and may reveal urgent issues, like domestic violence, or neglect, like poor sanitation services or awful landlords. As some 311 data shows the reporting zip codes, the data can be useful as a form of a needs assessment and for considering how to engage residents about their concerns at community forums, when canvassing, or in campaigns.
Additionally, organizers can create an alternative data source to crime data by developing and administering their own needs assessments. Particularly useful for canvassing, these surveys can ask people about what makes them feel unsafe or vulnerable without imposing a crime and criminal punishment lens. Asking questions about what keeps people up at night or what they worry about or when do they feel the most secure or at peace may yield more details about what they struggle with, need help with, and the world they might like to build than simply asking someone about crime or victimization. We might learn about concerns about money, the cost of living, the lack of job opportunities in the city, or conflict with neighbors. It might also help us connect with people’s sense of vulnerability or fears while also working with people to articulate a more expansive idea of safety and security beyond that articulated through crime data sources. This is where having knowledge of local data beyond crime statistics and police budgets can be useful as it allows us to discuss the priorities of city budgeting and how we can organize for a different vision of public safety based on shared abundance and meeting people’s needs.
Tamara K. Nopper is a sociologist, writer, educator, and editor. Her research, scholarly publications, popular pieces, and public educational lectures focus on wellness politics, financialization, credit scoring, the racial wealth gap, data literacy (particularly about crime data), policing and surveillance, Asian American communities, and Black-Asian solidarity politics.She is the editor of We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, a book of Mariame Kaba’s writings and interviews (Haymarket Books), researcher and writer of several data stories for Colin Kaepernick’s Abolition for the People series and edited book, and guest editor of the Critical Sociology forum “Race and Money.” Tamara is an affiliate at Data & Society Research Institute as well as at the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies. Previously, she was a senior researcher for the Labor Futures team and a race and technology faculty fellow at Data & Society, a fellow at Data for Progress, and a member of the inaugural cohort of the NYU Institute for Public Interest Technology. She is also involved in labor activism.