Scribbled notes from when I read this:

Same publisher as the 12 Rules For What one, which also means full marks for design and illustrations. You can read the whole thing online at the Dog Section website too.

The majority of the book is taken up with why the police - and policing - is bad, with some contributors expanding the readers' view of the police to include border controls etc. This is fine, as far as it goes, but I'd venture that people who pick up a book called "Abolishing The Police" are already not massive fans of the police. In fact, loads of people have criticisms of the police, especially now, which makes the book quite timely. It's just that there is a gulf between criticising the police and calling for their abolition that I think could have been given more focus here.

The vast majority of contributors are academics of some sort and there is a tendency to get a bit word-soupy and ultra intersectional. But having said that, a lot of them also seem to be doing useful work in communities, which is more than I am at the moment. The editor was assaulted by Hackney police for giving a kid who was being arrested a bust card - and was hauled over the coals by the tabloids for her efforts into the bargain, including an especially foul piece by Jeremy Clarkson iirc. (I contributed to her crowdfunder fwiw.)

Perhaps it is this lecturey/footnotey profile of the contributors that made a lot of the material a bit abstract for me. I am sure that someone in the book would say this abstractness is because I am a cis white middle class bear who is not a sex worker or mad* or a bunch of other things, which would mean that I am more likely to be on the sharp end of policing in my daily life. Despite these privileges, I would like to abolish the police. And I am aware that there are times and places where this has happened in some ways, or where practical steps have been taken towards doing that. So perhaps the book could have been strengthened by including some more concrete examples of that.

There are some very useful chapters later in the book on transformative justice (as opposed to restorative justice) which I would recommend. And mentions of other sources to go for further information. The glossary in the book is a link to the related Abolitionist Futures website, which seems a lot more practical and readable. So you might want to start there.

*Mad is the term used in the book, as in Mad Pride, reclaiming "queer" etc.