Defund, Reform, Abolish: an analysis of the media coverage of the police and prison abolition movement in the United States

Abstract

Critiques of the systems of justice and punishment in the United States are not new, but are experiencing unprecedented momentum after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May of 2020. After this event sparked protests against police brutality across the globe, it sparked something else: increased attention on the police and prison abolition movement and a national conversation around the reimagining of the systems of policing and imprisonment in the United States. This study analyzes how recent attention on the police and prison abolition movement has been covered by the media in the United States, specifically how coverage differs depending on the locality and political leanings of the news source.