Reform Versus Rebuild
“The police are an offshoot of the overseer on the plantation and the slave patrols…. This history of race and policing in America is deep, and we do ourselves a disservice by just glossing over it.”
HE UPRISING SPARKED BY THE POLICE KILLING OF George Floyd on May 25 has pushed the debate around public safety into territory that would have seemed unthinkable in Texas just months ago. Howard Henderson, director of the Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University, says the protests have turned into an unprecedented opportunityto reimagine policing in the United States. In June, Henderson gathered a group of Black criminal justice researchers and experts to center the voices of communities about police reform and the country’s history of race and law enforcement.
