Dr. El Jones Co-Writes Report on Defunding the Police

Professor of Political and Canadian Studies at Mount St. Vincent University, Dr. El Jones was asked to work on a report of recommendations for the Halifax Regional Police with regards to what defunding the police could actually look like. Dr. Jones sat down with President of Black Lives Matter New Brunswick Matthew Martin and Dr. Timothy Christie, co-hosts of NBWA: New Brunswickers Want Action on CHCO-TV to discuss the report and the impact it could have on communities across Canada, including in New Brunswick. 

"I came to that work really through a history of activism and advocacy as well as for over a decade I've worked very closely with people in prisons and we provide connections to legal supports and court support," said Dr. Jones. "I've done a lot of the reintegration work that we need in community to try to connect people with housing, etc. I also do a lot of work intervening in deportation and with migrant workers, but also the other ways that people experience policing and criminalization at our borders. I also work with women who are experiencing violence or abuse in shelters or other sites, so I really came to this work from a deep immersion in what the impacts of trauma are--the ways that people are criminalized, and the sense that the systems that we have set up right now are not doing anything to intervene in harm and are not helping people heal."

The report that Jones helped co-write is 217 pages in length and it is extensively researched. It includes 36 recommendations as a starting point for how defunding the police might proceed if adapted by Canadian police forces. These recommendations are organized under four pillars and emerged in response to an extensive public consultation process. The research team used 2351 survey responses to inform the report and held a 6-hour public meeting with 19 presentations.

"We are fed a narrative, so people genuinely believe that you know if you get rid of the police there will be chaos, but we recommend is reallocating resources to better serve the community," said Dr. Jones.