America's violent democracy: addressing police violence as a structural injustice

This paper aims to address the issue of police violence in local police forces by drawing attention to the structural features that are often unnoticed in department practices. My goal in this paper is to demonstrate how we can learn about police violence by looking at budgets and settlements as a structural injustice. In section one, I give an account of social roles that are examined through a structural explanation and show how this explanation can help us to identify and understand structural injustice. In section two, I begin by discussing the historical context in which the first national commission on police violence developed in the United States and then demonstrate the lack of structural examination in contemporary philosophical writings on police violence. In section three, I propose that participatory budgeting potentially establishes political accountability for vulnerable social groups regarding police violence as a structural injustice. I argue that vulnerable groups' participation in the governing process of police budgets and settlements can potentially establish accountability in police practices.