As people across North America protested police brutality and racism in late May, three nursing PhD candidates at Dalhousie University saw the need for nurses to take a stand.

So, Keisha Jefferies, Leah Carrier, andMartha Paynter came together to write a letter in early June. The letter called on nurses across the country to join the movement for police and prison abolition.

We feel its really necessary for our profession, if we are truly champions for public health, to confirm that by joining the movement, said Paynter in an interview Wednesday.

In the letter, the three friends highlight the ways in which police and prison are harmful.

In prisons, Black, Indigenous, and people of colour are disproportionately incarcerated and consequently bare what the letter refers to as the horror of prisons: isolation, restraints, infection, and injury.

To seek care while in prison requires compliance with traumatizing security protocols strip searching, observation, violations of confidentiality, the letter said.

The three colleagues believe nursing is a trusted and respected profession with a huge platform to advocate for communities experiencing harm.

Paynter said its also in the nature of nurses to intervene for the sake of their patients whether it was by administering medication or IV fluids.

What were saying is nurses need to adopt political interventions to change the course of social harm, she said.

The nurses also touched on the role of the police in the deaths of DAndre Campbell, who was shot by police in April in Ontario, and Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who fell from a Toronto balcony in May. The letter said the consequences of policing and prison challenge the efforts of nurses to provide care to their communities.

We will not have our work undone by police and prison systems, the letter reads.

The letter said any investment in reforming the police would be futile. Instead, governments should be investing in areas such as housing, education, and social assistance.

Why arent we deeply troubled by how the tables have turned to frankly dump money into policing, when policing does not work to eliminate harm? said Paynter.It actually creates not just harm but death in our communities.

Nurses are not the answer to the issue of policing, according to Paynter. But they can play a role in building public services that maintain the well-being of communities.

When these services are available, Paynter said policing and prisons would become unnecessary.

This is what she expects would happen if drugs were decriminalized.

Last week, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police released a statement to call on federal lawmakers to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of illegal drugs.

Paynter said the police shouldnt be championed for making the move this late. But if drugs were decriminalized nurses can help keep people safe by facilitating access to safe substances and providing all care thats associated with substance use.

While supporting community-based efforts to abolish policing is a priority for the three registered nurses, their letter also urges nurses in North America to start from within.

(We should) simultaneously be looking inward to see how our profession operates in a way that uses punishment and exclusion and discrimination in its operations, said Paynter.

Paynter gave an example for how nurses can be complicit in oppressing Black, Indigenous, and people of colour.

Nurses are taught to have really racist ideas about pain and policing access to pain relief based on those racist assumptions.

After releasing the letter in June, Paynter said about 1,000 people signed it. It was also translated into French, German, and Spanish.

But when she sent the letter to several nursing organizations across Nova Scotia and Canada, Paynter said she received no endorsements.

Our profession really struggles with divorcing itself from policing even though the evidence is clear that police brutality is one of the greatest infrastructures of systemic racism in this country, said Paynter.

She added that nursing organizations can start their fight against racism by increasing representation of Black, Indigenous and people of colour on their boards.

The letter Jefferies, Carrier, and Paynter wrote was published Wednesday in Public Health Nursing, a peer-reviewed journal.

Paynter said change is happening in policing and the nursing practice, but it needs to continue moving.

I envision nurses as really key leaders in a movement forward where police and prison do not exist.

Nebal Snan is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter, a positionfunded by the federal government.

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Why nurses are joining the call for policing and prison abolition - SaltWire Network