By Avlana Eisenberg

The clamor for police reform in the United States has reached a fever pitch. The current debate has mainly centered around questions of police function: What functions should police perform, and how should they perform them to avoid injustice and unnecessary harm? This Article, in contrast, focuses on a central aspect of police culture-namely, how police envision their relationship to those policed. It exposes the vast reach of a deeply engrained "danger narrative" and demonstrates the disastrous consequences that this narrative has helped to bring about. Reinforced by police training, codified by courts, and broadly deployed, the danger narrative is an "us-versus-them" ideology that envisions "them"-all persons whom police are observing, investigating, detaining-as a lethal danger to "us"-law enforcement personnel. Structural and functional reforms have little hope of succeeding unless this toxic narrative can be displaced.

By Avlana Eisenberg

One tends to think of mercy as something that judges and chief executives occasionally dole out to convicted offenders. This picture is seriously incomplete. Many others are in a position to be merciful—from police on the street to corrections officers in a prison. In short, anyone who has power to inflict something disagreeable on another person has the opportunity to be merciful. More broadly still, mercy—understood as an act of leniency prompted by compassion—presupposes a capacity or disposition, namely the capacity or disposition to show compassion and understanding for another. This Essay develops both of the foregoing points. First, it points out that there are opportunities for mercy at every juncture of the criminal process, from policing to prison conditions. Second, it is not only the case that acts of mercy at each of these junctures are called for to help ameliorate the harshness of our criminal justice system. More broadly and more deeply, it is vital that all actors in the system approach their roles with the sort of compassionate mindset that is exemplified by, but hardly exhausted by, acts of mercy.