Why Would Feminists Trust the Police?

Description

How did feminists end up turning to the police and the law to make them safe? A history of British feminism’s long connections with the police and criminal justice system.

The abduction and murder of Sarah Everard by London Met officer Wayne Couzens and the sharing photos of the bodies of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry by constables revealed something rotten about policing in Britain. Every week it seems there is a fresh scandal involving abhorrent, racist, misogynist behaviour by serving officers. Yet, these are the very people that women are supposed to seek help from when they face violence. And many feminists continue to hope that the criminal justice system can be used to make women safe: fighting for stronger laws and longer sentences for those who harm them.

Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? traces the history of British feminism’s alliances and struggles with the law and its enforcers, to ask: how did feminists come to rely on the police to make them safe? And how can we change course? Drawing on the history of Black British feminism and police and prison abolition, Leah Cowan issues a corrective: the police are not feminists, and they will not bring us safety.Acknowledgements

Introduction: Why Would Feminists Trust the Police?
1. False Histories in the Shadow of the Empire
2. A Symphony of Order and Chaos
3. The ‘Sectorification’ of Radical Struggle
4. Feminisms of Fear and Resistance in the New Millennium
5. Defund, Abolish, Now

Further Reading
Notes
Index“An urgent call to dismantle carceral feminism rooted in a powerful historical analysis that centers the lived experiences and movements of those left out of mainstream feminism.”
—Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing

“This unflinching history of mainstream British feminism’s entanglements with the police deserves to be read by all feminists. Cowan tackles crucial questions, from why some suffrage campaigners eventually became fascists, to why some feminists demanded more police power after Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving police officer. She also explores the still-marginalised history of working class, women of colour feminist organising which has sought transformation instead of control. This is essential reading to help us out of the quagmire in which gains for some women are still achieved at the expense of others.”
—Alison Phipps, author of Me, Not You: the trouble with mainstream feminism

“Why Would Feminists Trust the Police? is the book we’ve been waiting for. Leah combines forensic research with a rare and generous clarity of thought. I learned so much about the history of policing and the pioneering attempts to build something different and better in the future. This should be required reading, especially for white women.”
—Emily Kenway, author of Who CaresLeah Cowan is a writer and editor. She is the former Politics Editor at gal-dem, an online magazine and media platform run by women and non-binary people of colour. Leah also works at Project 17, an advice centre for migrant families who have No Recourse to Public Funds and are facing homelessness and destitution. Leah has written for publications including Vice UK, Huck, DOPE magazine, and the Guardian and in 2018 delivered a TEDxTalk presenting an intersectional analysis of emotional labour. Leah speaks and lectures, including for UN Women, in the House of Commons, at the Trades Union Congress, and at Queen Mary University of London. Her first book, BORDER NATION, breaking down the borders of migration, was published in 2021.GB

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