*A few wires got crossed, and so you'll be getting the last two parts of this conversation today. Thank you for your patience! Part 3 includes the announcement of our next book! Before you get started, check out the intro to this Book Talk HERE and Part 1 HERE*
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Ashley:
As we're talking about police as placebo, or a shift in practice or praxis, I'm noticing every book I read on incarceration has to talk about sexual assault. Nobody gets out of it.
Danielle:
I know.
Ashley:
There are conversations around sexual assault in every single book. It's a big part of it, and when Derecka was writing about having conversations about abolition and the fact that that's one of the questions that gets brought up the most, "Well, what do we do with the rapists? What if someone raped someone? What do we do about that?" it takes you back around to the police as placebo conversation because the police don't solve very many rapes. Even when people report, they don't get prosecuted at rates the general public would assume. As a matter of fact, quite often survivors and/or victims of sexual assault have spoken to how the reporting of their assault was the second worst part. The conversation they had to have with the officer, the questions they were asked, the way they were treated was the worst part.
I'm reading that section, and I start thinking about a recent article I read about a 12 year old girl who died by her own hand after reporting a sexual assault and after the interview with the officer she died by suicide.
Danielle:
I think about the weight of feeling hopeless or helpless. Just in any sense of my life. Or, rather, any part, any task of my life and some of the more traumatic ones, and how thankful I am for the support that I did have. I don't know that I personally have ever faced somebody telling me, "Well, what's that really going to do?" in a context that was that heavy. It's a notion I don't know how to fathom.
Ashley:
It's wild. It is absolutely wild. I've been thinking about it for a long time for obvious personal reasons. "What does it mean? What does it do when we segregate people in that way? When we take them out and we put them in this place for this crime?" It's hard for me because I think even what the book is saying and what I've typically known to be true is that reporting an assault is never going to be an easy process for the victim or survivor. In many, not all, cases I've known personally, or read about as I've researched this, the cops do not help.
Danielle:
I also don't believe they're equipped to help, either. That's where we, again, as a society fall short with this whole concept of police as the placebo. "Well, they're supposed to be the ones to keep us safe." And regardless of anybody's belief on that, preparation is a key part. Nobody can be prepared to deal with every single traumatic situation. And anybody within these criminal justice systems is experiencing constant trauma. As you said, sexual assault is usually the most prolific one. Poverty being the next. Abolition is getting rid of the system where the outcomes are no longer helping, they're no longer restorative, and examining ways in which we can explore a multitude of alternatives.
Ashley:
Right.
Danielle:
I think of reform of sexual assault and this idea that lawmakers and community members have said, "Well, we need somebody who isn’t an officer to be available in every police station who can take somebody's statement if they've experienced a sexual assault," Well, those are humans, so unless you have somebody who's willing to work around the clock, sexual assault doesn't happen on a nine to five schedule.
Why are we assuming police stations should be the only places a sexual assault victim should be directed or could go? I think about the community-based organizations that have the ability to help people with hotlines that are available 24/7, you can call someone or meet with someone. Those are the kinds of solutions that shouldn't seem radical, but do.
Ashley:
Right.
Danielle:
To me, radical is expecting a police station to have somebody on staff 24/7 who has been trained correctly and properly to take the statement of a sexual assault victim at any given moment of the day, anywhere throughout the United States. To me, that's radical.
Ashley:
They have social workers who do that kind of work in a lot of public libraries! How did they not have somebody like that in the police department? It's wild to me.
Danielle:
And the question becomes do they need somebody to say, "I've been assaulted sexually. Yes, I should go to the police station.” Is that really where we want a teenager to go?
Ashley:
Nothing about the police station seems like it's a place you want to go after something like that happens.
Danielle:
Well, not when you're taught your whole life that's where criminals are, and you just experienced crime. We want people to feel comfortable reporting sexual assault, and we want to be able to actually follow up and and have those follow-ups lead to accountability if possible, when possible.
*See you in the next post for the announcement of our next book!*
