Citizen surveil-labour: Analysing Crime Stoppers and its alliance of police, media, and publics
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Author | Laura McGillivray,Robyn Lincoln |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865818786761 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Citizen surveil-labour:
Analysing Crime Stoppers
and its alliance of police,
media, and publics
Robyn Lincoln
Bond University, Australia
Laura McGillivray
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Abstract
An examination of a Crime Stoppers initiative – a weekly page published in a major city-based
tabloid newspaper – afforded a rare glimpse into this understudied global entity. It also
offered a means of reflecting on the co-option of CCTV images; partnerships between
police, media organisations, and diverse publics; and the harnessing of citizen labour in a
culture of surveillance. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted on the images,
accompanying texts, and rhetoric of this feature page for a two-year period. From a media
criminology perspective, the portrayals underscore the abrogation of the presumption of
innocence, a focus on mundane property offences, with the potential to exacerbate fear of
crime and to engender more punitive public attitudes. From a conceptual frame, this article
proffers the notion of surveil-labour where the repurposing of CCTV data in the context of a
Crime Stoppers scheme reinforces an alliance of police, media, and the public to enhance an
infrastructure of informing.
Keywords
CCTV, citizen participation, Crime Stoppers, media criminology, police–media partnerships,
surveillance
Date received: 9 March 2018; accepted: 7 June 2018
Corresponding author:
Robyn Lincoln, Faculty of Society & Design, Bond University, 14 University Drive, Gold Coast, QLD 4229, Australia.
Email: rlincoln@bond.edu.au
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2019, Vol. 52(2) 291–307
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865818786761
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Introduction
A major city newspaper recently introduced a weekly feature page that comprises secu-
rity camera images of local crime events and calls on its readers to provide information.
In a news article about the segment, it was heralded as a ‘crime-busting measure’ that
combines ‘the law, this newspaper and the public’ as ‘forces for good’ with the aims of
‘stopping crime’ and ‘making the community safer’ (Gold Coast Bulletin, 2016, p. 46).
The tabloid proclaimed that readers could ‘take a bow’ because ‘41 cases were solved
and a total of 189 charges were laid’ from the ‘202 matters published’; yet ‘crooks can’t
say they haven’t been warned ... the city is watching’. Advertising such crime metrics
and framing them within a crime-fighting discourse in this manner are emblematic of the
Crime Stoppers project (Jermyn, 2006), which is a key collaborator on this
media feature.
This weekly initiative provided a timely opportunity to interrogate its representations
of crime that, in turn, prompt questions about the surveillant utility of CCTV images,
the project of Crime Stoppers, and the police–media–public partnerships. This explo-
ration is apposite given the few robust evaluations of Crime Stoppers globally, which
remains a ‘surprisingly understudied’ enterprise (Lippert & Wilkinson, 2010, p. 132)
despite its international reach (Challinger, 2003, 2004). This is not to deny the seminal
research from North America and the United Kingdom over three decades (e.g.
Carriere, 1987; Carriere & Ericson, 1989; Gresham, Stockdale, & Batholomew, 2003;
Gresham, Stockdale, Batholomew, & Bullock, 2001; Lavrakas, Rosenbaum, & Lurigio,
1990; Lippert, 2002, 2009; Lippert & Walby, 2017; Lurigio & Rosenbaum, 1991; Parent,
1993; Pfuhl, 1992; Rosenbaum, Lurigio, & Lavrakas, 1989). Yet, scant attention has
been paid to Crime Stoppers locally beyond the reviews of the Victorian scheme
(Challinger, 2003, 2004; Galanopoulos, 1999), its inclusion in an examination of citizen
engagement with police (Ayling, 2007), and the critique from an assemblage perspective
that drew upon advertisements from Australia (Lippert & Wilkinson, 2010).
This article presents findings from content and discourse analysis of the weekly fea-
ture for a two-year period since its inception. The page hosts four to six photographs
and short descriptions of incidents allegedly involving offending behaviours from petrol
drive-offs and shoplifting, to credit card fraud and assaults. Quantitative data were
extracted from over 500 items and coded for content and quality. Qualitative analysis
was conducted on the accompanying textual case descriptions and the overall rhetoric of
the page. This research contributes to our understanding of police–media–public
alliances, the construction of crime narratives through ‘real-life’ cases presented as info-
tainment, and explores how police and Crime Stoppers leverage the work of informing
by repurposing CCTV technologies.
Overview and evaluations of Crime Stoppers
Crime Stoppers is a convergence of police, media, private sponsorship, and a watchful
public, to ultimately derive citizen information about local crime events (Lippert &
Wilkinson, 2010). Since its inception in 1976 it has been professed to be the ‘most
institutionally embedded crime reduction program’ in America (Lippert & Wilkinson,
2010, p. 132), with expansion into Canada, Australia, and the UK throughout the 1980s,
292 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 52(2)
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