Goon Squad Democracy? The Rise of Vigilant Citizenship through Victim Support and Neighborhood Watches in Amsterdam (1980-1990)

This paper analyses the rise of a new kind of urban citizenship in the context of the urban crisis of the 1980s: the vigilant citizen, characterized by a view of citizens as possible victims, who assume and are called upon to take responsibility for social safety. Top-down policy explanations insufficiently clarify why the polarized debate over urban petty crime developed into a consensus by the mid-1980s. Tying in with recent trends in urban police history, this paper shows the diversity of bottom-up actors in Amsterdam that helped to, sometimes unintentionally, further a communitarian “social safety” agenda: vigilantes and victim-support groups, the former based in more conservative circles, the latter partly inspired by women advocacy groups. These actors entered into a sometimes-tense dynamic with the police and municipality, which took up the challenge of providing victim support and of educating the public for neighborhood prevention. This slowly yielded results.

Criminal Justice and the Police

In Fatimid Fustat-Cairo the shurta was a police force responsible for fighting crime and its chiefs dispensed criminal justice. How the shurta and its chiefs operated in Fustat of the 1020s is discussed relying on Musabbih’s reports concerning 1024-1025. The shurta as an urban police force intended to fight crime was too small to maintain law and order in the capital and, in times of crisis, the task was delegated to the army.