Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Jotwell
Publication Date
7-2-2025
ISSN
2330-1295
Page Number
1
Keywords
public safety, police reform, civil liberties
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Law
Abstract
Shawn Fields' The New Public Safety: Police Reform and the Lurking Threat to Civil Liberties, which will be published by the University of California Press in September, is a brave and wise effort to envision a post-DeFund the Police world. While the defund movement has, at best, been a mixed success, some municipalities have experimented with de-policing routine interactions with people who are unhoused and mentally ill, authorizing civilian "violence interrupters" to roam the streets, and handing over traffic enforcement to unarmed officials. In The New Public Safety, Fields endorses these developments but also cautions that, without regulation, they will become simply a new version of policing, one that may look "soft" but in fact is not. At the same time, he argues that, with regulation, soft policing is preferable to the goal of entirely dismantling government-oriented responses, a goal that is currently popular in some circles but, as Field shows, goes too far.
Recommended Citation
Christopher Slobogin,
Making the New Public Safety Safe Jotwell. 1
(2025)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/1713