I came around to prison abolition once I realized it was a goal that was meant to be achieved piece by piece.
Cash bail. That's one piece. None of those people need to be in jail. They haven't been convicted of a crime and they overwhelmingly show up for their court date if released. The only thing they can't afford is their bail and that is used to get them to plead to crimes without the police having to prove anything. That's 470k people on any given night. *
Drug possession. Like to smoke weed? Well, that's your choice and no need to throw you in jail over it like 1.4 million people each year.
The other pieces are more radical or require replacement programs or just don't even have proposed solutions. But just above are two pieces of the incarceration system that the many people will agree could just be turned off.
So, if you turn those off, what's the staffing change in police departments and correctional facilities? We're not talking about firing for performance (yet), this is just run of the mill right sizing. Gotta be efficient--can't give people jobs as a handout.
What if you kept going down this line of reasoning. What if you ended racial profiling? Across the country black motorists are 20% more likely to be pulled over. Either black people are being targeted (the consensus) or white people are being given a free pass (my personal experience is that this is also happening). So either hire more police to pull over white people more often. We are doing hella drugs, driving drunk all the time, texting while driving, etc. Or, more along the lines of what everyone wants, there could be a 20% reduction in the staffing of highway patrol.
I think if the will of the people was respected, police departments would probably be reduced by 25% across the country. Certainly in NYC, which has one of the highest cops per capita in the world even though we have the highest density and cops shouldn't have to walk far to do their jobs.
If it were my policy though, probably 50% of police could be eliminated.
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
https://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics
* https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/us/police-stops-race-stanford...