IAE for reimagining policing

“Ideas are embedded within arrangements, which in turn produce effects.”

- Ideas Arrangements Effects: Systems Design & Social Justice* by Design Studio for Social Intervention*

Sometimes we get stuck thinking about how we can intervene in, or reimagine arrangements, that have been around for so long. Amidst deep pain and rage of the repeated violence caused by police, thinking with the Ideas-Arrangements-Effects framework has helped me make sense as we work to understand our respective roles to create a just world. I hope it can for you too.

The effect is that these young people are gone, killed by police between March and April 2021.

The questions are not only: Was he not in possession of a gun?, But wasn’t he involved in gang life? Wasn’t she threatening others with a knife?

The questions must also be: What arrangements create the conditions for a police officer to aim and shoot a child in the chest within seconds of them raising their hands in the air? What arrangements are present that a child was out on the street at 5AM? What arrangements have caused her distress? What arrangements define traffic violations and protocols around it? What arrangements were at play to produce these effects: Daunte Wright, 20, Adam Toledo,13, and Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, shot and killed by police on site?

Arrangements: policing (including police protocols and training), redlining and neighborhood disinvestment, poor access to transportation and open space, access to affordable housing, the choice to stay or move, underfunded education, access to mental health care, prison industrial complex… What other arrangements were present to produce these effects?

Policing is an arrangement. Policing is an arrangement that is centuries old that goes back to slave patrols in the United States. It is an arrangement that goes back even further to imperial England in the 1800s where a militarized force was designed to oppress the resistance led by Irish farmers’ to defend the theft of their land -Paraphrased from Enforcers to Guardians by Fullilove & Cooper, 2020

The next question is, What ideas are embedded in these arrangements?

Ideas: ideas of threat, ideas of police under threat, ideas of trained gun protocol, ideas of controlling the situation, ideas about Black and Brown people, ideas about protecting the public. What other ideas are embedded in these arrangements?

Let’s go deeper: What ideas are embedded in those ideas? Colonial ideas of police force. White Supremacy. Racism. So now we ask: How do we intervene in these arrangements?

We often intervene at the level of effects which is important and sometimes the more actionable of choices. What more could be possible, however, if we intervened at the level of arrangements?

Intervening in rapid rates of urban development and displacement could look like redefining area median income (AMI). Intervening in an underfunded education system looks like charter schools. Intervening in the arrangement of the police institution looks like police reform.

Now, what more could be possible if we reimagined new arrangements?

How do we imagine new arrangements of policing?

Reimagining policing could look like transformative and restorative justice. Reimagining police could look like community care-workers called in moments of crisis. Reimagining policing could look like horizontal development and investing in true community health and safety.

Reimagining policing could begin with defunding the police.

I write with utmost respect for the souls, families and communities of Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo and Ma’Khia Bryant, as I process their last moments of young life at the hands of police. May they rest in peace and may they rest in power. The killings of Black and Brown people at the hands of police have been and still are, traumatizing, rampant, and overwhelmingly unchecked in a complicated justice system. Amidst deep pain and rage of the repeated violence caused by police, thinking with the Ideas-Arrangements-Effects framework has helped me make sense as we work to understand our respective roles to create a just world. I hope it can for you too.

Read our book, Ideas Arrangements Effects: Systems Design and Social Justice by Design Studio for Social Intervention. Written by Kenneth Bailey, Lori Lobenstine, Ayako Maruyama. 2020.

Read a paper we co-wrote: Horizontal Development: Equitable development for city-makers by University of Orange and Design Studio of Social Intervention including Aubrey J. Murdock, Nupur Chaudhury and Molly Rose Kaufman. 2019.

Read this book that has helped me understand : Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence by Mindy Thompson Fullilove and Hannah Cooper. 2020.