Law Enforcement

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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June 13, 2026

Law enforcement is one of the most visible and consequential parts of government. In a democracy, police are supposed to protect public safety, enforce the law fairly, prevent and investigate crime, help people in emergencies, and do all of this under constitutional limits. Their authority is legitimate only if it is used to serve the public, not to intimidate, punish, or control disfavored groups. The Department of Justice describes its broader mission as upholding the rule of law, keeping the country safe, and protecting civil rights, and local police departments are expected to serve similar purposes in their own communities. Without some effective system of law enforcement, the rule of law gives way to fear, private retaliation, vigilantism, and unequal protection for those who lack power or resources.

At the same time, law enforcement can become a serious conflict overlay problem when people believe that policing is unfair, abusive, discriminatory, or indifferent to their safety. Some communities have long complained of over-policing, racial profiling, unnecessary stops, excessive force, and unequal treatment. Others complain of under-policing: slow response times, low clearance rates, open-air drug dealing, theft, violence, or disorder that authorities seem unwilling or unable to address. Both problems damage legitimacy. Over-policing teaches people that the state is hostile; under-policing teaches them that the state has abandoned them. The National Institute of Justice explains that police legitimacy depends heavily on whether the public believes police authority is fair and deserves to be recognized.

The "defund the police" movement illustrates how quickly legitimate grievances can be framed in politically damaging and practically confusing ways. Many advocates used the phrase to call for shifting some responsibilities and funds from armed police to mental health services, housing, addiction treatment, violence interruption, and other community supports. Those goals reflected real concerns about asking police to handle too many social problems for which they are poorly equipped. But the slogan also sounded to many voters like a call for little or no policing, and public opinion did not support that. Pew Research Center found in 2021 that a growing share of Americans wanted more police spending in their area, and even among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, more favored increasing police spending than decreasing it.

Crime trends also complicate the debate. The Council on Criminal Justice found that homicide rose sharply in 2020 and continued upward in 2021 before falling in 2022, 2023, and 2024, while FBI data showed violent crime declining in 2023. These patterns do not prove a simple cause-and-effect relationship between budget debates and crime, but they do show why public safety cannot be treated as a symbolic issue.

Best practices in democratic policing focus on both effectiveness and legitimacy. The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing organized its recommendations around pillars such as building trust and legitimacy, policy and oversight, technology and social media, community policing, training and education, and officer wellness and safety. Procedural justice is central to this approach. A Bureau of Justice Assistance paper on procedural justice and police legitimacy emphasizes the importance of voice, neutrality, respect, and trustworthy motives in police-citizen encounters. Community policing also matters. The Justice Department's COPS Office describes community policing as involving partnerships, organizational change, and problem solving, not just more patrols or more arrests.

The constructive goal is not to choose between public safety and civil rights. Democracies need both. Effective law enforcement protects victims, deters violence, holds offenders accountable, and makes it possible for ordinary people to live without constant fear. Legitimate law enforcement does this while respecting constitutional limits, avoiding discrimination, being transparent about its data and practices, accepting accountability for misconduct, and listening to the communities it serves. Some functions now handled by police may be better handled by mental health teams, social workers, schools, housing agencies, or public health workers. But that is different from pretending that police are unnecessary. The real challenge is to build law enforcement systems that are fair enough to be trusted, effective enough to protect the vulnerable, restrained enough to respect liberty, and accountable enough to correct their own abuses.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page