Defund Or Disband?

Why attempts at incrementalism are almost certainly due to fail

Image credit: MinnPost

There’s a lot of talk at present about defunding or even disbanding police forces. Most people seem to equate the two, but in fact they are very different things indeed.

Disbanding is the more conceptually simple of the two options. Were this to be done, it would mean firing all current police officers and shutting down all departments and then starting again from the base up.

In many ways this option has a great deal to recommend it. There are times in history where we see organizations that are so dysfunctional that the only option is to clear the decks and begin again, because reform is in practice impossible. Several years ago the reforming President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushenko, realized that attempting to reform his country’s blatantly corrupt forces would be futile. Instead, he fired all regional police chiefs and totally disbanded the Traffic Police. Overnight, Ukrainians found themselves able to drive without being pulled over every few kilometers and shaken down for bribes. The replacement service was structured with totally different hiring and training policies and was a huge improvement over what had gone before.

While Ukraine experienced no significant change in the rate of traffic violations and accidents, it’s…