The Nexus of Knowledge, Power, and Justice

Sor Juana's entire career was a statement that knowledge production itself is a matter of justice: if certain people are prevented from thinking, writing, and being recognized as knowers, then society loses their perspectives and reasoning. This applies directly to policing. Currently, police institutions largely control what counts as knowledge about police work, crime patterns, and public safety. Academic criminology, police training academies, and administrative agencies set the frameworks through which policing is understood. Cross-cultural communities often possess sophisticated knowledge about what actually creates safety in their neighborhoods—knowledge grounded in lived experience and generations of practice—but this knowledge is systematically excluded from formal police decision-making. Sor Juana's example suggests that justice requires centering the knowledge of those most affected by policing. This means police agencies must actively solicit community knowledge about safety, create mechanisms for that knowledge to genuinely influence policy, and question their own frameworks when community experience contradicts official narratives. True cross-cultural policing reform recognizes communities as knowledge producers, not merely subjects of police knowledge.