“Wanting to put an end to police violence actually means wanting to put an end to the police”: interview with Gwenola Ricordeau

Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at California State University, Chico, Gwenola Ricordeau is a feminist and abolitionist activist. She has published, among other works, “Pour elles toutes. Femmes contre la prison” (Lux, 2019) and “1312 raisons d’abolir la police” (Lux, 2023). She offers a critical perspective not only on the institutions of prison and police themselves but also on the notion of “impunity”—including when it is invoked in struggles against sexual or police violence. In this interview with INDEX, she warns against the pitfalls of a strictly judicial approach to the pursuit of justice.

INDEX: Beyond the question of emprisonnement, criminal or penal abolitionism proposes a critique of the very notion of “crime”. Could you explain what this critique consists of?

Gwenola Ricordeau: First of all, abolitionism is not the only movement to call this into question. For example, critical criminology also calls into question penal categories, and therefore the category of ‘crime’. ‘Crime’ is a debatable category, in that it focuses on certain types of harm and, as a result, on certain categories of the population. As a result, when we designate an act as a crime, we remain stuck in categories that are those of the penal system and the State. This forces us to envisage a punitive response to such acts as the only possible response – something that penal abolitionism attempts to overcome.

INDEX: In your book ” Pour elles toutes. Femmes contre la prison” (Lux, 2019), you quote Louk Hulsman: “crime has no ontological reality. Crime is not the object, but the product of criminal policy. Criminalisation is one of the many ways in which social reality is constructed“. In your opinion, does this formula also apply to police violence? If you don’t think criminalising it is an appropriate response, how do you respond to it in order to contain or stop it?

GR : In order to answer this question, we need to set out a number of preconditions. First of all, even if I use the expression “police violence” when it’s used by militant groups, I still think it’s a bit of a trap. I’m not making a casus belli out of it, but as far as I’m concerned, you can’t separate the issue of the police from that of police violence. To want to put an end to police violence is actually to want to put an end to the police. It would be totally illusory to think that we could simply put an end to police violence without doing away with the institution of policing itself. In fact, I think it would be more accurate to talk about police violence as something that is part of that institution, that is characteristic of it. In the end, there is a form of consensus in the use of the expression ‘police violence’ that is problematic. Since it implies the idea of an excess (violence) in relation to a norm (the police), everyone can agree to oppose police violence. But this consensus overshadows the notion of violence that is inherent in the police, that is not in excess of it. In my opinion, there is already a conceptual and strategic knot to untangle here.

On the other hand, there is another strategic question, which is how to fight the police, or police violence, or the harm that results from the existence of the police. Here, the term is undoubtedly too weak to refer to what I prefer to call “police killings” or, better still, “state crimes”. Even if these expressions have the disadvantage of using penal categories, the word “crime” is also used in a common sense to evoke something particularly serious. I therefore tend to seldom use the expression “police violence”, because the issue is not that of the police, but that of the State, and moreover the expression “State crimes” allows to reflect upon the continuum between police crimes and prison crimes. As for how we should respond to this violence, this question means asking how we organise ourselves. Can the law be a tool for emancipation? Personally, I don’t think so. I think there may be circumstances in which it is legitimate and useful to wage legal battles, because circumstances mean that they can be essentially political battles. But there is always a risk that, in the end, the law, the trials, will help to legitimise the institution, whether police or criminal. I also have my doubts about whether the needs of victims can be met by a criminal trial.

INDEX: In legal proceedings concerning police violence, there is a dimension of reversal: police officers—who usually form an essential cog in the penal system—can find themselves in the position of the accused. Does this reversal create a specificity in the way abolitionist thought proposes to address police violence?

GR: Abolitionist thought and movements initially focused on the issue of prisons. It’s only in the past fifteen years or so, and primarily in the United States, that the issue of policing has come to the forefront. This shift is largely due to the dead end—an unfortunate one—faced by victims of police violence, meaning both the impasse of the legal system and the failure of reformist approaches, the repeated calls to reform the police to reduce its violence. I don’t think we can speak of abolitionist opposition to legal efforts against police violence. There are debates and controversies within abolitionist movements. But in my view, a common thread in our thinking and practice should be moving away from the focus on impunity.

The issue should not be impunity; it’s a trap to simply demand the punishment of those who commit state violence. If we stay locked in that discourse, we remain within the logic of punitive justice—we continue to legitimize the idea that there are “bad” police officers who should be punished to prevent them from doing harm. But if there are bad police officers, that implies there are good ones—that it’s possible for someone within the institution of policing not to embody or enact violence. We saw this clearly in the trial of Derek Chauvin [the police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020, whose death sparked protests across the U.S.; he was convicted of murder in 2021 and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison, ed.]. That trial was portrayed as a spectacular turning point for the reform of the police institution. But who testified against Derek Chauvin? Police unions. Who celebrated his conviction? Police unions. They obviously have a vested interest in preserving the narrative that there are good and bad cops. That narrative prevented the trial of Derek Chauvin from becoming a trial of the police as an institution. In the end, it was just the trial of one officer.

That’s why I’m extremely wary of legal strategies, but at the same time, I don’t completely reject them—because I believe that under certain circumstances, particularly when driven by political mobilization, it is indeed possible to put the institution of the police on trial. Unfortunately, at least for now, we mostly remain at the level of trying individual officers for their individual actions. As a result, the broader issue—the inherent violence of the police as an institution—continues to be obscured.

INDEX: There is a text in “1312 Reasons to Abolish the Police” (Lux, 2023) by Kristian Williams about “copwatching”—the practice of filming and monitoring police activity. Williams writes that, in and of themselves, citizen oversight and grassroots investigations are not enough to achieve results, but that there is an interplay between bottom-up inquiries, citizen monitoring, popular mobilizations, and so on—each of these practices reinforcing one another. Do you think that such practices, including legal battles, have a role to play in this sense, as catalysts for a broader mobilization around the issue of policing and its violence?

GR: Let me begin by saying that I really don’t want to give the impression that I’m devaluing the efforts of collectives, family members, or activists mobilized around this issue, including through legal avenues. To be honest, I hesitated a bit before agreeing to this interview: on the one hand, I want to express certain reservations and warnings, but on the other, I deeply respect the courage and the political intent behind these legal actions and struggles, which I do not want to discredit in any way.

That said, to return to your question, it’s true that Kristian Williams rightly points out the risks associated with practices like copwatching or so-called citizen oversight of the police—particularly when these practices are depoliticized or not rooted in a broader critique of the police as an institution. The risk, in my view, is always that they may reinforce the idea that the existence of the police is natural, that every society needs a police force. We saw this in the wake of the mobilizations following the murder of George Floyd. Several police departments showed a willingness to implement forms of citizen oversight or supervision. But that doesn’t necessarily—and very rarely does—lead to a reduction in the use of force by police. On the contrary, these programs can serve as strategies to legitimize the police institution and, by extension, its use of force. To put it plainly, this can easily amount to political messaging rather than any real reduction in the police’s capacity to do harm.

Indirectly, your question also touches on the work of an organization like yours, and on its strategic value in combating police violence. First of all, I want to say that I have a great deal of respect for the commitment and sincerity of your work. But secondly, I fear that in the long run, you might become integrated into the penal system—that you could end up doing the penal system’s job, only more effectively and at lower cost, and that this could ultimately contribute to legitimizing that system. This is a broader critique that applies to NGOs in general—about how they can, in some cases, undermine struggles, regardless of the intentions of the individuals involved.

I do recognize that the penal system sometimes—and I want to emphasize sometimes—has the capacity to meet two key needs of victims: the need for truth and the need for recognition of harm, or the acknowledgment of a state crime. But in practice, the chances that these needs will actually be met are extremely rare. I believe there’s something very misleading about this, including for all other victims of state violence and crimes. The conditions that allow some victims to access truth and recognition of a state crime are so specific that these rare “victories” can actually contribute to keeping many other victims locked in illusory pursuits, in endless grieving processes… Alongside that, the kind of discourse that says, “My grief doesn’t play out in the courtroom; it takes other forms… My needs won’t be met through the justice system” is difficult to make heard. I wonder whether the injunction to demand a trial, to seek legal reparation, might not actually go against victims’ emancipation—and against our ability to imagine other ways of grieving—not just outside the courts, but within the political sphere.

INDEX: Precisely, a significant part of the popular mobilization against police violence has been built around the slogan “truth and justice” [“vérité et justice” in French]. In your view, what are the paths through which this demand for truth and justice could be fulfilled, outside of the judicial and penal system in particular?

GR: There was a slogan about deaths in prison: “Everyone who dies in prison was killed by prison”. I think that’s very accurate. The starting point is that the truth of an event isn’t necessarily confined to its specific circumstances. When a police killing occurs, of course we can understand the need—especially for the victim’s loved ones—to know exactly how it happened. But those details shouldn’t make us lose sight of the fact that the main party responsible for such a death is the state, through its police force.

There’s also the question of recognizing the harm done. I believe activists have a responsibility to think about how to create recognition for these deaths without waiting for the state to grant it—how to make it possible for the families of victims to grieve in ways that don’t rely on the courts. The same goes for sexual violence. The pressure placed on victims to file a complaint, as if that act alone could guarantee their healing, raises many questions. We know that a survivor of sexual violence has needs that go beyond the criminalization of the perpetrator. If I could make one wish, it would be that the needs of victims—of state crimes, of sexual violence—be placed at the center of conversations around strategies for response and mobilization.

Victims’ demand for truth must, of course, be heard. But we should keep in mind that “judicial truth” is not the truth, and that we often don’t need a trial to know the truth—that the police kill. My reservations about the pursuit of truth lie, once again, in the risk of offering victims only one path forward: a search for truth that, we have to admit, is sometimes unattainable. To put it plainly: truth—and then what? Truth is not inherently emancipatory or restorative, and it is possible to heal or grieve even without knowing the truth, or knowing it only partially, or only sensing it.

INDEX: To conduct our independent counter-investigations into cases of police violence, we rely heavily on the images that circulate of these incidents. In your book “1312 raisons d’abolir la police”, you write about such images that “we can question their status and social uses, and agree that they are not without ambiguities”. What do you mean by that? What are your thoughts on the proliferation of images of police violence? In your view, what role do they play in bringing cases like those of George Floyd or Nahel into the public debate?

GR: Personally, I do my best not to watch images of people being killed or beaten. On an emotional level, I find them traumatizing. For example, I did not watch the footage of George Floyd’s death—I refused to. Here in the United States, there is an overwhelming number of such images circulating, especially of Black people being killed by police. The frequency of their circulation has, in some ways, normalized such events. I believe not only that we don’t need to see these images to know what’s happening, but also that this kind of spectacle contributes to a form of dehumanization of the victims.

There’s also a strategic dimension to consider. If we accept that certain cases of police violence become undeniable only because there is footage proving them, what does that imply for all the cases where no such footage exists? Rather than focusing on its systemic nature—as a phenomenon widely experienced by entire segments of the population—the debate around police violence ends up being reduced to the few cases where we have visual proof. But from an abolitionist perspective, it’s more useful to talk about the systemic nature of this violence, about what the existence of the police does to our lives—whether or not those actions are caught on camera.

INDEX: Still on the topic of media coverage of police violence, in your book “1312…” you address the question of access to the public sphere, the role of the media in choosing who is allowed to speak, and who is granted the title of expert. In your opinion, what are the conditions for publicly speaking about such a subject, and what do they reveal?

GR: When I wrote that, I was primarily thinking about the access to public speech for victims of state violence. I find that it largely depends on how much their narrative aligns with a story deemed acceptable—that of impossible mourning and the quest for justice from the authorities. This kind of discourse is heard in the media because it fits the penal ideology: the right to justice, the right to a trial, the outrage that impunity of the perpetrators would cause. But in the media space, there is almost never any discussion about the very reason the police exist, or what the police do under normal circumstances, beyond incidents that are presented as anomalies. We never talk about the ordinary work of a police officer—which I would describe as cruel, unjust, racist, classist, misogynist work. To access the public space, it seems necessary to conform to the narrative that treats police violence as anomalies and ignores the question of violence as the norm.

Regarding expertise, it reminds me of the role psychologists play in courts, a role that often shocks me. Although these “experts” often have rather far-fetched theories about the unconscious, about the repressed desires of individuals, their discourse easily carries authority in criminal proceedings. And yet, there are other scientific disciplines that courts almost never call upon: I’m thinking of history and sociology, which could provide valuable insights, especially regarding evidence of the systemic nature of many harms. It’s interesting to see how the penal system relies on a discipline like psychology, which psychologizes the issue and thereby reduces manifestations of violence to individual decisions—even when they are systemic or institutional violence—while understanding and explaining them would actually require other disciplines.

INDEX: Throughout this interview, you have critiqued the concept of impunity. For those whose goal is to end police violence, why do you think the approach of demanding an end to police impunity is a dead end?

GR: Obviously, there is something emotionally and subjectively scandalous about police impunity. I don’t contest that. But once that is said, it’s worth asking: what is the purpose of punishing these police officers? The classic answer is that punishment can be deterrent; it might discourage other officers from acting similarly. But from the perspective of criminology studies, there is very little evidence that punishment is actually a deterrent. In the case of what we call police violence, the Derek Chauvin trial was not followed by a decrease in the number of people killed by police; on the contrary, it was followed by an increase. One might also argue that punishment allows these officers to reform—that’s the rehabilitative argument for punishment. Or that it is something owed to the victims—that’s the retributive argument. Personally, I think the retributive aspect makes very little sense regarding the needs of victims. Punishing perpetrators does not guarantee their healing or mourning. But for the state system, punishment is a relatively easy way to protect its legitimacy by showing it can distinguish between good and bad police officers. That’s why I’m not sure that ending police impunity is a victory, or even a strategically worthwhile objective. Similarly, I would say it’s not necessarily a victory to end impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence. I am convinced that this is not how we will end police violence or sexual violence. I tend to side with those who think certain reforms that concretely reduce police power might reduce cases of violence—maybe. But I am extremely cautious about that. Ultimately, for me, the real issue is societal change. How can we imagine security and addressing harm without entrusting these essential aspects of social life to the police and penal institutions?