Implementing 'defund the Police': How State-Nonprofit Funding Dynamics Contribute to Carcerality or Liberation from State Oppression

Background/Purpose: Since 2020, multiple US cities—in response to police killings of BIPOC people and related social movements for change—have defunded the police and reinvested resources in social and community-based services. Yet, far from being distinct systems, contemporary US carceral and social service systems operate in convergent ways to socially control and criminalize racialized communities that live under a regime of state-sponsored poverty (Soss et al., 2011; Wacquant, 2009). Research shows that state-based funding to social service organizations can contribute to the ongoing collaboration between these systems during service design and implementation (Simes et al., 2022). Indeed, critical and abolitionist scholarship suggests that liberation from state oppression may be undermined through resource-based ties between the state and nonprofit social service organizations (Gilmore, 2007; Smith, 2007). As police defunding remains a core strategy of abolitionist organizing (Ritchie, 2022), evidence is needed to understand the state-nonprofit funding dynamics activated through police defunding and how these dynamics contribute to further carcerality or liberation from state oppression. As such, this paper asks: what are the funding dynamics between municipal government and local nonprofit social service systems in cities that have defunded the police?

Methods: A comparative case study was conducted of two cities that have taken substantial steps to transform local public safety services, including through defunding the police. Primary methods included a 21-month virtual ethnography of each city’s transformation process and fifty qualitative interviews of relevant organizational actors, including social service administrators, frontline service providers, police, public administrators, social movement activists, and funders. Using pattern coding and thematic analysis (Saldaña, 2016), ethnographic observation and interviews were used to identify and understand the funding dynamics in social service systems that were the direct recipients of former police resources.

Results: Qualitative analysis revealed that police defunding activated three primary state-nonprofit funding dynamics: contracting and collaboration, organizational competition, and public accountability. These dynamics were heavily influenced by interorganizational and inter-sector relationships, as well as funding mandates and state policy. While police defunding contributed to supporting non-carceral public safety alternatives, it also activated funding dynamics that perpetuated several challenges that are core to abolitionist aims. These included funding dynamics that supported ongoing or new collaboration between service providers and police, prioritized established social service organizations over community-based innovation, and obfuscated the work of key social service organizations involved in public safety.

Conclusions/Implications: When liberation from state oppression involves resource-based strategies like police defunding, it is imperative to pay attention to funding dynamics on-the-ground. As such, this paper contributes to advocacy efforts for non-carceral public safety services by uncovering the black box of resource implementation when funding for those services comes through the state. As an alternative to state-based resources, mutual aid is a primary abolitionist tool that can reduce police collaboration, support multiple and novel community-based alternatives, and improve community accountability.