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sudo wrote

In the State and Revolution, Lenin says that the current police should be replaced by the armed vanguard of the workers. What he means is that there should still be a group that protects people from violent criminals, but it should be in control of and in service to the workers. It would be preferable if it's made up of workers and community members, also. So, there would still be a police force, but it would serve the proletarian state instead of the bourgeois one, and of course the proletarian state is controlled by the proletariat. Some people say that the word "police" only applies to the current bourgeois police, but I think that's silly.

I imagine that a huge percent of the current police force will be booted out (maybe some neutral administrative types could stay, or some necessary specialists who can't be replaced). The only actual officers that could stay would be the ones who aren't personally bigoted, and didn't understand that they were doing the capitalists' dirty work. There are some like that, who joined out of a misguided attempt to administer justice (and under socialism, joining the police would actually be administering justice). All the racist, classist, sexist, etc, ones would be booted out, and hopefully would be forced to repay the communities they terrorized.

And as far as jails go, they should be about protecting the innocent, reforming the criminal, and repaying the victim. As of now, they are purely about punishment.

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