Re-envisioning Public Safety
The Problem:
Our city must divest from the predatory and expensive “arrest and incarcerate” model of public safety, and invest in communities, an approach that has proven to reduce violence and actually keep people safe.
+ Close the Workhouse
- Adopt the recommendations of the Re-envisioning the Workhouse report.
- Fund the Memorial Resource Hub.
- Reparations for Workhouse survivors.
+ Divest from Policing, Invest in Real Public Safety
- Abolish the failed arrest and incarcerate model of public safety. Divest from police overtime, over one hundred vacant positions, SWAT, Shotspotter, and the Real Time Crime Center.
- Civilianize police units: spin off units like Traffic, Drug Enforcement, Domestic Abuse, Juvenile, and Internal Affairs into departments like Streets, Health, Human Services, and Personnel. Empower civilian staff trained in trauma informed case management to interview victims and draft incident reports.
- Ensure that local police are not being trained in military tactics, including through exchange programs with domestic or foreign military units.
- Invest in non-carceral restorative and transformative justice strategies, including emotional regulation and support circles for neighborhoods and robust prevention and response alternatives for neighborhoods experiencing violence.
+ Decriminalizing Poverty, Addiction, Protest, and Sex Work
- Repeal all ordinances with criminal penalties related to poverty, addiction, protest, HIV status, or sex work from the municipal code, including ‘quality-of-life’ offenses used to criminalize sex workers, unhoused folks, and people who use drugs, such as loitering, public camping, public urination, illegally congregating, prostitution, solicitation, and panhandling.
- Adopt enforcement policies that decriminalize these offenses, which are rooted in a legacy of racial, social, and patriarchal control.
- Reduce the size and scope of the City Municipal Court, which oversees many poverty crimes.
- Abandon the practice, by the City Counselor’s office, of using criminal or municipal charges to extract waivers of civil claims against City officers.
- Fund and implement harm reduction-based drug use interventions, including effective syringe service programs (SSPs), drug checking, and supervised safer use sites.
+ Anti-Surveillance
- Defund and eliminate state surveillance of civilians, which disproportionately impacts Black St. Louisans and those who are poor or unhoused.
- Pass and implement a substantive Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) bill in St. Louis.
Resource Guide
Community Resources: Close The Workhouse Report 1.0 and 2.0, Defund The Police Toolkit, State of Police Reform, State of the Hustle, Ferguson Commission Report
Campaigns: Close the Workhouse, #NoSpyPlanes, Break the Pipeline, Campaign for Real Public Safety, Protect Black Womxn - FFJ’s Community Healing Fund, Privacy Watch STL, Smart Sentencing Coalition, MO Ho Justice Coalition
Anchor Organizations: ArchCity Defenders, Action St. Louis, CAPCR, Bail Project-St. Louis, Organization for Black Struggle, Missouri Faith Voices, MoHo Justice Coalition, Empower Missouri, St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee, Faith For Justice, Peace Economy Project, Women’s Voices Raised for Social Justice, Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center, ExpectUs
The People’s Plan. Building Our St. Louis. The People’s Plan. Building Our St. Louis. The People’s Plan. Building Our St. Louis.