Do-it-yourself surveillance: The practices and effects of WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention groups

WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention (WNCP) groups are popular in the Netherlands. As a basic assumption, this kind of digital neighbourhood watch could prevent crime, but what is the evidence? Drawing on a mixture of qualitative research and a review of additional publications, we conclude that WNCP groups stimulate social cohesion rather than prevent crime. We reach our conclusion by applying the evaluation EMMIE framework – an acronym for Effect, Mechanisms, Moderators, Implementation and Economics – to the available data. A point for further discussion is the limited scope of the economic dimension. Moral costs must be calculated, too, as WNCP groups tend to deepen divisions between groups of citizens and fuel exclusionary practices in the name of community safety.

Promoting urban security through community participation: evidence from Wa, Ghana

Crime remains one of the major threats to urban communities in Ghana. Ostensibly, the hitherto approach in crime control had been targeting statutory institutions, notably the Ghana Police Service, to the neglect of community level participation, which has become critical due to the increase in crime levels and manpower challenges facing the law enforcement agencies. Against this background, this paper examined how community members contribute to the promotion of security in Wa, a cosmopolitan community in the Upper West Region of Ghana, which often escapes official reports. Forty-three (43) community crime control actors in addition to three key informants were selected purposely in a case study design. Primary data were gathered through interviews and focus group discussions. The study found that community actors complement the efforts of the police by supplying relevant information on crime and offenders resulting in the arrest and prosecution of offenders in the law courts; providing logistical support such as motorbikes and fuel to the police; arresting and handing over suspected criminals to the police; engaging the services of private security operatives; as well as undertaking community patrols often known as ‘neighbourhood watch’. Given the critical role of citizens in crime prevention and control, and the promotion of communities’ safety, the paper recommends that the police should periodically organise workshops to educate community members on modern crime trends and strategies so as to improve their skills in crime control and detection.

Crime prevention, swarm intelligence and stigmergy: Understanding the mechanisms of social media-facilitated community crime prevention

Social media are now utilized extensively by Neighbourhood Watch-style initiatives; however, the impact social media have on the practices and mechanisms of community crime prevention remains under-theorized. Drawing on our observations of an Australian-based community crime prevention group over two-and-a-half years, this article develops a grounded theory of the mechanisms underpinning the group’s social media-facilitated practices of responding to local crime. We find that social media-facilitated Neighbourhood Watch is shaped by two phenomena that have yet to receive sustained attention in crime prevention research. These are swarm intelligence—a form of self-organization wherein collectives process information to solve problems that members cannot solve individually—and stigmergy: work that stimulates further work. In explaining how swarm intelligence and stigmergy interact with several of the long-acknowledged mechanisms and issues associated with Neighbourhood Watch, we emphasize the importance of examining how the media context of community crime prevention groups shapes their practices, behaviour and (in)efficacy.

Community Policing And Crime Prevention: Evaluating The Role Of Traditional Leaders Under Chief Madliwa In Nkayi District, Zimbabwe

Community policing is a strategic consideration for contemporary policing, especially when police organisations worldwide increasingly seek cost-effective and sustainable methods of combating crime. The principle of community policing recognises the community and its leaders as equal partners in the prevention and reduction of crime. Hence, there is a need for research to interrogate how different police organisations have considered community policing as a panacea to their policing challenges. This study sought to evaluate the role of traditional leaders in community policing and crime prevention in the community of Chief Madliwa, Nkayi District in Matabeleland North Province of Zimbabwe. Interviews were carried out with eight village heads, four headmen and three key informants. Four focus group discussions were conducted to collect the villagers’ insight on the role of traditional leaders in community policing and crime prevention. Participants were identified using purposive and convenience sampling. The findings revealed that community policing is an effective strategy for crime prevention and that traditional leaders play a pivotal role in the success of community policing and crime prevention. Traditional leaders play an integral role in the recruitment of members of the Neighbourhood Watch Committee, assist with organising the business community to cooperate with the police in the fight against crime and play an important role in organising the community to attend crime awareness campaigns arranged by the police.

When Citizens Are “Actually Doing Police Work”: The Blurring of Boundaries in WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention Groups in The Netherlands

Neighbourhood watch messaging groups are part of an already pervasive phenomenon in The Netherlands, despite having only recently emerged. In many neighbourhoods, street signs have been installed to make passers-by aware of active neighbourhood surveillance. In messaging groups (using WhatsApp or similar communication apps), neighbours exchange warnings, concerns, and information about incidents, emergencies, and (allegedly) suspicious situations. These exchanges often lead to neighbours actively protecting and monitoring their streets, sending messages about suspicious activities, and using camera-phones to record events. While citizen-initiated participatory policing practices in the neighbourhood can increase (experiences of) safety and social cohesion, they often default to lateral surveillance, ethnic profiling, risky vigilantism, and distrust towards neighbours and strangers. Whereas the use of messaging apps is central, WhatsApp neighbourhood crime prevention (WNCP) groups are heterogeneous: they vary from independent self-organised policing networks to neighbours working with and alongside community police. As suggested by one of our interviewees, this can lead to citizens “actually doing police work,” which complicates relationships between police and citizens. This paper draws on interviews and focus groups in order to examine participatory policing practices and the responsibilisation of citizens for their neighbourhood safety and security. This exploration of actual practices shows that these often diverge from the intended process and that the blurring of boundaries between police and citizens complicates issues of accountability and normalises suspicion and the responsibilisation of citizens.

Monitoring Mogadishu

Technology-based surveillance practices have changed the modes of policing found in the global North but have yet to influence police–citizen engagement in Southern cities such as Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Based on the role played by monitoring in Mogadishu’s formal security plan and in an informal neighbourhood watch scheme in Waberi district, this article uses a policy-oriented approach to generate insight into surveillance and policing in a fragile and seemingly dysfunctional environment. It shows that while watching is an integral aspect of everyday life, sophisticated technologies capable of digitally capturing real-time events play no part in crime reporting or in the monitoring of terrorist threats, and information is delivered by using basic and inclusive methods such as word of mouth, rather than by mobile telephones or social media. Indeed, the availability of technologies such as CCTV has actually resulted in the reproduction and reinforcement of older models of policing; even when the need to monitor security threats encourages residents to engage with the task of policing, their responses reflect local preferences and legacy issues dating from the 1970s and 2000s. In other words, policing practice has not been reconfigured. In Mogadishu, as in most of the world, the policing task is shaped as much by residents’ expectations as by the technologies available.

Defying the Burglar in Post-War London

Burglary in London during the decades after the Second World War continued to emblematize the fears, preoccupations, and experiences of ‘home’ of modern urbanites. Burglars’ prevalence was inextricable from the city’s national and international reputation, a reality that posed a stark criminal contrast to the refrain of Britons’ ‘never having it so good’, as Prime Minister Harold MacMillan declared in 1957. Violence, especially the spiralling rates of sexual violence that tore apart households attempting to recover from the war, created a pronounced association between burglary, rape, and on occasion, murder. Chapter 7 reveals the attempts of police officers and criminal psychologists to rationalize the actions of perpetrators in relation to their childhoods, relationships, and family circumstances, embodied in a series of violent burglaries committed during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yet officials’ observations largely effaced the broader reality of widespread forms of poverty and precarious employment that also fostered crime. The potential for burglars to once more imperil residents’ sense of security had bigger implications for the city’s resurgent economy, damaging the attractiveness of the capital to visiting movie stars and celebrities (and their jewels) who were otherwise drawn to its ‘swinging’ reputation. In response, the Metropolitan Police’s ‘Beat the Burglar’ campaign, created in coordination with security and insurance companies, tried to institute an embryonic form of ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ system. Encouraging citizens to monitor one another and report disturbances, it compromised cherished notions of privacy in the efforts to collapse space and time between police and prey.