On Whether the Police Are Necessary: A Musing

Whether the police are necessary to a society is a difficult question to answer and cannot be approached in absolutes. It may seem, at first, that the police as one knows it are an indispensable component of American society; were they to be disbanded, he might well believe that the order in modern society would come to a crashing halt. Indeed, he may be hard-pressed to find a replacement entity to aid him when he discovers his car vandalized or to ease his mind when his neighbors are blaring their music. He may also be reluctant to drive on the freeway to work the next day for fear that there would be little incentive for his fellow drivers to remain within the legal speed limit, potentially resulting in countless accidents.

In this case, he should be made aware that the concept of modern policing is a very new - barely over 100 years globally - idea against the backdrop of human history. For the race to survive to the present there clearly must have been at least some periods of calm in its past; the concerned person in question should rather concern himself with how order was maintained in the past, most likely through self-regulation in which members of a community, as a community, watched over each other and promulgated its norms. Granted that these communities were typically comprised of extended families, there was nevertheless a strong sense of togetherness which is seen today in small towns and villages that are not necessarily bound by blood. Perhaps if such a sense of community could be fostered in American cities - block by block, and neighborhood by neighborhood - self-policing might be a feasible occurrence.