I’m sitting in the special collections archive at the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library. The room is small and sits in the far corner of the second floor. The one window is a long rectangle that just barely filters light into the gray space. Suddenly, noise erupts from the first-level rotunda. A security guard and a library patron are shouting at each other, the words blurring together as the volume escalates. Then the commotion ends as quickly as it began. This is not the first such outburst since I started working as a contracted archivist, and it will not be the last.
The sliding entry doors open to two metal detectors and a security desk with one or two officers seated in front of a computer screen. They are on duty for the duration of the library’s working hours, chatting with each other and pacing the front hallway. As they check the cameras on the monitors, they lock and unlock the only patron bathrooms in the entire towering building as people line up to use the facilities.
The relationship between libraries and policing is long and reflects the larger political and social climate these institutions exist within. Libraries have been complicit in white supremacy for the whole of their existence, with many remaining segregated well into the 1960s, Library cards were often inaccessible to Black people, who were sometimes even beaten or arrested for trying to get their own library card. When an institution withholds free and plentiful information from anyone other than white people, it upholds a racist power dynamic that still exists to this very day.1
More than ever before, libraries offer a wide variety of programming and social services. These include immigration support, housing support, language learning classes, nutrition classes, financial literacy classes, connections for legal aid, job training, and music therapy.2 The buildings themselves have become useful to houseless patrons who need shelter from the rain, snow, and extreme heat. It is increasingly common for libraries to have staff social workers who assist in mental health support and de-escalation.
As the library evolves as a safe haven for struggling patrons, what does it mean to increase police presence in these institutions?
According to Mapping Police Violence, an initiative that reports data regarding police violence, “Black people were 28% of those killed by police in 2020 despite being only 13% of the population,” and are three times as likely to be killed by cops than white people are. Moreover, most police killings occur when cops are called for nonviolent offenses. These statistics mirror the rampant violence police inflict in library settings. Librarians and library patrons often call the police for nonviolent offenses in libraries or request support from security guards to calm a patron down or remove them from the premises. These situations put Black and other non-white people at high risk for police violence. In 2017, a Lakewood, Ohio, teenager had her jaw broken by a police officer. In 2015, two police officers killed a Black man in a New Jersey public library.3
In stark contrast to the forces that seek to continue police surveillance and violence, there are librarians, archivists, and library workers seeking an end to policing in libraries. Abolition is the framework and practice of ending imprisonment and finding alternative, healing community solutions to punishment. This ideology is not new, having been extensively theorized by activists like Angela Davis, Mariame Kaba, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. Groups like Critical Resistance and 8 to Abolition use grassroots organizing tools to create dialogue and pathways for living in a cop-free world.
In library school, we’re taught to be as inclusive as possible in our approach to working with patrons. There’s an emphasis on accessible technology and making sure disabled patrons receive proper help. This commitment to accessible care is proof that libraries can reach beyond performative anti-racist activism, that they can do more than compile reading lists and put up Black History Month decorations.
With that in mind, a network of abolitionist librarians, library workers, and patrons have come together to seek divestment from police and prison labor. Cop Free Library is a group of librarians calling for no police in New York City libraries. Libraries for All St Louis is a coalition that fights for anti-racist library practices. The Library Freedom Project, once a collective fighting library surveillance and police power in library institutions, has flourished into a newly formed Abolitionist Library Association (AbLA). Alison, an AbLA facilitator who requested to use her first name only, says that the AbLA’s “goal is to create libraries that are rooted in community self-determination and intellectual freedom through collective action. We work toward this in a variety of ways, which are fairly decentralized but joined in shared purpose and regular all-collective meetings.”
The AbLA contends that libraries are safer without police and seeks to divest from the Prison-Industrial Complex (PIC). A bustling listserv connects library workers and patrons from across the country as they share ideas, information, and resources. The association is split into working groups: Abolition in Special Collections, Resource List Working Group, Library Divestment from PIC Labor, and Information Access for Incarcerated People. With regular meetings and collective organizing, the Los Angeles members have successfully encouraged their commissioners to transfer millions from LAPD to a “Reimagining Safety Initiative.” The association has a mission for Ivy league libraries as well, encouraging institutional divestment from prison labor.
Alison, a librarian and archivist who manages the processing for archival collections, values a sense of traditionalism in her work, but “cannot find meaning in work that prioritizes ‘stuff’ over people.” She says, “The purpose of my work is to provide meaningful, inclusive, respectful access to cultural heritage material, and I see police (and PIC more broadly) presence in libraries as directly antithetical to that purpose. Special collections in particular are areas of the library that are heavily policed, reiterating that violence by the state onto people is preferred over the loss of a physical object. When property is prioritized over people, we begin to lose any sense of community.”
Alison cites a recent anecdote: “To access the two main special collections at my university, one first has to walk past security officers, who are posted at each of the libraries’ entrances. I taught a class a few weeks ago, and one of the students remarked, ‘I had to walk past three security guards to get here.’ In addition to the more tangible negative impact policing has on our communities, what does the presence of those guards say to the library’s community members and guests?” That question, along with innumerable instances of police intimidation, is what drives the mission of the AbLA.
Alongside the AbLA, other abolitionist organizations and local libraries are taking steps toward the same goal. Cop Free Library conducts a survey to record information from New York library patrons about their experiences with security and police in libraries. Seattle Public Library has filed an open letter to their Board of Trustees, stating the library’s policies and partnerships with the Seattle Police Department endanger transgender and nonbinary patrons, as well as demanding transparency for library surveillance practices. The New England Library Association has prepared a presentation titled “Abolition at the Library: How Libraries Can Divest from Police.” As more libraries engage in this quest for abolition, it becomes easier to see a future of community care, skilled de-escalation, and no police violence.
The Abolition in Special Collections (AbSC) chapter for the Abolitionist Library Association is focusing on current special collections guidelines that are contingent on police participation, including video surveillance and strict sentencing laws for those who steal from special collections libraries. According to Alison, “AbSC disputes the notion that police and policing serve a meaningful role in keeping our collections safe — particularly since there is a dearth of literature and data to back up that notion — and assert that the rights, safety, and comfort of library users should be our top concern when considering collections security. Beyond policing in our spaces, we also acknowledge that our libraries are intertwined with the PIC in multiple other ways, from vendors and manufacturing processes that rely on the labor of incarcerated people to institutional endowments that invest in the PIC.”
The initial call for action came from the Library Freedom Project, which insisted that libraries must push beyond mere performative activism and inclusion: “It is not enough for libraries to say ‘Black Lives Matter.’” As the Library Freedom Project explained, “When we call the police to deal with patron issues, rather than investing in our own de-escalation strategies and alternatives, we are risking police violence, especially against our most vulnerable patrons. Furthermore, the library profession is overwhelmingly white women, who have unique historic complicity in violence against Black people.”
These collective organizing groups share a commitment and ideological debt to abolition. The divestment from police and security is key to their efforts, which demand the complete absence of police power, not just a reduction of it. These groups call on libraries to adopt de-escalation tactics and properly equip their staff so there is no need for police intervention. Furthermore, the divestment in police should be accompanied by an investment in community and education. The Library Freedom Project has emphasized that “libraries should form partnerships with community organizations that specialize in restorative justice, public health, and support for marginalized communities. These organizations can assist with staff training and policy-making, and may be able to help provide the resources and services our patrons need.”
As libraries continue to grow and expand and redefine themselves, the Abolitionist Library Association is an important part of that evolution. Libraries must understand that encouraging and facilitating interactions between police and patrons who are at high risk of police violence is a reckless contradiction of the support and community which libraries should provide.
- George M. Eberhart, “Desegregating Public Libraries,” American Libraries, June 25, 2018; Ella Fassler and Anya Ventura, “Police in Libraries: What the Cop-Free Library Movement Wants,” Teen Vogue, Feb. 3, 2021; Shirley A. Wiegand and Wayne A. Wiegand, The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South: Civil Rights and Local Activism (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2018); Maurice Wheeler, Debbie Johnson-Houston, and Billie E. Walker, “A Brief History of Library Service to African Americans,” American Libraries 35 (Feb. 2004): 42–45.
- For more about these kinds of programs, check out the Programming Librarian website run by the American Library Association Public Programs Office.
- Corey Shaffer, “Lakewood mother files suit against police officer who broke her teen daughter’s jaw inside library,” cleveland.com, June 5, 2017; Anthony G. Attrino, “Lyndhurst cops cleared in fatal shooting for second time in 9 months,” NJ.com, June 16, 2016.
