NCJ Number
116108
Date Published
1989
Length
119 pages
Annotation
This monograph examines the community policing movement through an analysis of the origins, operations, and consequences of the Crime Stoppers organization -- a nonprofit, community-based crime control program that operates through the cooperative efforts of the public, police, and media.
Abstract
The program arose at the level of dominant institutions, rather than at the grass-roots level or as a response to a moral panic about the crime problem. In contrast to the Guardian Angels, another community policing initiative that has been less accepted, Crime Stoppers seeks to fight crime within the established procedures and frames of police and media. In the program, police and journalists work together to produce a crime of the week that is broadcast and published along with requests for citizen assistance in identifying the culprits. The stories are ideologically effective because of their affective content, typically featuring vulnerable victims of street crime and terrible offenders. A blend of sympathy for the victim and moral outrage against the offenders is at the heart of the affective quality of the program. These stories are not based on systematic evidence, but on dubious constructions of factuality about criminals captured and contraband seized. Crime Stoppers has emerged as a moral entity greater than the sum of its contributing parts. In coordinating disparate institutions it has managed to embrace dominant institutions in the hegemonic process and has been successful in representing itself as the embodiment of law and order. With this form of representation it has no need to involve more than a few members of the community directly, although at the symbolic level it leaves few community members untouched. Therein lies the real power of community policing. 88 references. (Author abstract modified)