This chapter presents the results of a survey experiment testing cooperation interventions in Lagos. It provides background information on the relatively limited efforts to date to promote police–citizen cooperation in the megacity. The chapter describes the virtual reality–based survey experiment used to test the interventions in which respondents are shown a hypothetical area boy fight from a shopkeeper’s point of view. The results indicate that respondents who viewed the vignettes with an anonymous tip line and the intervention to raise awareness of cooperation support among shopkeepers boosts information sharing. Exposure to co-ethnic police officers in the vignette, however, shows little effect on information sharing. The chapter also discusses the mechanisms through which cooperation support exists despite widespread distrust of the Nigeria Police Force among Lagosians.

This chapter presents the results of a survey experiment testing cooperation interventions in Baltimore. It describes existing efforts in the city to promote cooperation with the police and how police rely on information from witnesses. The survey experiment entails respondents viewing and responding to a professionally produced fictional news report of a shooting with experimental variations to test the various interventions. The results show police encouraging cooperators to call an anonymous tip line (as opposed to a non-anonymous line) as well as creating awareness of cooperation norms both increase information sharing. The police commander portrayed in the news report being the same race as the respondent does not change the amount information that they are willing to share. The chapter also discusses the mechanisms of how support for cooperation exists in Baltimore despite distrust of the police.

This chapter theorizes how interventions employed by police and community safety advocates might promote cooperation. The evaluation focuses on two interventions that plausibly reverse cycles of silence: facilitating cooperator anonymity to reduce the risk involved in information sharing and creating awareness of support for cooperation to strengthen the perceived norms favoring information sharing. Given that these interventions do not address distrust in the police, which places a ceiling on cooperation support, the evaluation also includes the trust-based intervention of exposing citizens to police officers of the same race or ethnicity. The chapter concludes with enumerating principles that should be considered when evaluating the appropriateness of implementing interventions to promote cooperation.

This chapter explores the phenemonon of private criminal dispositions, more commonly known as vigilante justice. It first examines the various definitions of vigilantism, noting that the term used in this book – “private criminal dispositions” – is a very broad category that includes legal and illegal actions. It then reviews different types of private criminal dispositions, including removing a benefit or privilege (often used by retail stores or employers), public shaming (often used against sexual predators), property damage (often used against computer hackers), and, finally, acts of violence, including deadly force.The chapter concludes with a number of case studies of this final type of private criminal disposition, including the Kyle Rittenhouse case and the Ahmaud Arbery murder.

Weaponizing phone lines to enforce white spaces has proven an effective tool for the passively fearful. In most cases, it lends anonymity, allowing a racially fragile citizen to lodge a complaint and recede into the shadows as armed agents of the State assume responsibility. Akin to keyboard warriors and internet trolls, 911 abusers can lob unsubstantiated attacks and escape involvement or scrutiny themselves. But this type of color line enforcement is a step removed from the action. It relies on a 911 dispatcher and a trained law enforcement officer to act on the frivolous, race-baiting tip. Some white space defenders want to be more involved, to take the law into their own hands under the guise of self-defense. Thanks to gun rights lobbies and state legislatures across the country, now they can. No trend better encapsulates the State’s increasing acquiescence to civilian weaponization of racial fear than Stand Your Ground laws. These laws fly in the face of traditional self-defense doctrine, posing a serious threat to public safety “by encouraging armed vigilantism

Displacement and genocide, rather than fully eliminating the Haitian presence in Dominican territory, fomented new forms of contestation, tension, and conflict. Refugees’ prolonged patterns of contestation and resistance contributed to tense relations along the border throughout the 1940s. This chapter details ethnic Haitians’ methods of irregular resistance, which included secret farms, livestock-theft, the right of return, and in some rare cases, arson and vandalism. These incidents provide a window into some refugees’ political consciousness surrounding genocide, displacement, lost citizenship, and lost homeland. The chapter argues that ethnic Haitians challenged Trujillo’s territorial sovereignty and Dominicanization through land contestation, arson, and clandestine farming. Of these phenomena, clandestine farming was the most enduring and widespread form of resistance because it was the least dangerous and also functioned as a desperate survival strategy. The genocide continued throughout the 1940s in the form of isolated killings by which Trujillo’s government enforced the parallel policies of a closed border and Dominicanization. This chapter considers the ways in which desperate, irregular social contestation through nighttime farming and cross-border livestock-theft represented disturbing, latter-day echoes of colonial marronage.

To what extent can an ethnographic sensibility enhance comparison? We argue that approaching comparison with an ethnographic sensibility – that is, being sensitive to how informants make sense of their worlds and incorporating meaning into our analyses – can strengthen comparative qualitative research. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility would enhance the quality of scholarly arguments by incorporating the processes through which actors ascribe meanings to their lived experiences and the political processes in which they are enmeshed. Because social science arguments often involve accounts of individual actors’ interests, ideas, or impressions, it is imperative to place such cognitive arguments in a broader cultural context. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility requires attention not only to that context but also to the political and social meanings which make that context intelligible. We elaborate these arguments through the lens of two comparative ethnographic works: a study of political mobilization in Bolivia and Mexico and a study of vigilantism in two South African townships.

Chapter 6 explores the broad range of ancillary consequences that stem from registration and notification laws. These consequences disrupt nearly every facet of daily life for registrants, their families, and their communities. The chapter begins with the most acutely felt consequences – the difficulty registrants experience finding jobs and housing. Since locating employment and housing is critical to successful reentry, the negative effects of SORN laws on both inhibit registrants’ ability to reintegrate. These difficulties have also led to the spatial clustering (“ghettoization”) of registrants. Other consequences include increased vigilantism by the public and decreased property values near registrant residences. All these consequences may lead to negative secondary effects on nonsexual criminal behavior and mental health outcomes, and in turn may affect the wellbeing of the family members of registrants and the overall community. Importantly, these wide-ranging consequences may also have hydraulic effects on charging and reporting decisions. Ultimately, this chapter concludes that SORN laws’ wide-reaching deleterious effects, and their high implementation costs, outweigh their supposed benefits. As a result, it maintains that SORN laws must be tailored to higher-risk offenders and that community notification must be curtailed.

Chapter 2 moves into the later period of the war, when Biafra was cut off from the outside world and its carefully constructed legal system began to unravel. It traces the emergence of vigilantism, the blurring of lines between the battlefield and civilian life in Biafra, and the Biafran state’s loss of its monopoly on violence.

Chapter 6 shows how the Fernheim Colony’s collective narrative reached a point of crisis in 1944 as colonists transitioned from thinking that they should remain in Paraguay, as per the wishes of the MCC, to thinking that they should relocate to Nazi–controlled Eastern Europe. The latter, of course, was not to happen. Yet the stress, rupture, and violence caused by the quick reversal of the colony’s collective narrative – from an anticipated comic outcome to a tragic one – was quickly forgotten as Fernheimers devised a new narrative of continuity after the war. Aiding the creation of a new, centripetal Fernheim narrative, the MCC redoubled its efforts to draw the colonists into its narrative of global Mennonite unity. It dispatched volunteers to improve the colony’s healthcare and infrastructure and monitor colonists – attitudes about Nazism on behalf of the US government, which the MCC fully cooperated with during the war years. Meanwhile, the Menno Colony carried on as it had before the war. It remained free of ideological strife and had zero interest in relocating to Europe. Combined with Chapter 5, Chapter 6 indicates that Latin America ’ German–speaking communities exhibited a wide range of attitudes toward the Nazi state, from political indifference to overwrought anticipation.

The Public Morality Council (PMC), formed in 1899 by the Anglican Bishop of London, was between 1945 and 1965 the most powerful moral vigilante organisation in Britain. This chapter provides the first detailed study of its modus operandi, exploring its ecumenical governance, the role of Christian and Jewish leaders in diverting morality complaints to it for investigation and the manner of its surveillance (both overt and covert) of theatre plays, variety shows, films, radio and television programmes. The chapter explains the influential function of its long-time secretary, Methodist preacher George Tomlinson, the most important vigilante in the nation. It shows how its operations peaked in the 1950s, and reveals its sense of high influence with, on the one hand, regulators (such as the Lord Chamberlain, the British Board of Film Censors, the Home Office and London County Council) and with on the other hand industry bodies (such as theatre owners, film makers, importers and distributors). Its day-to-day operations and the intensity of its power in London and with government agencies are described.