Policing Property and Moral Risk Through Promotions,Anonymization and Rewards: Crime Stoppers Revisited

This article explores promotions, anonymity and rewards as techniques of governance in Canadian Crime Stoppers (CS) programmes by analysing texts and personal interviews. The function of CS Crime of the Week advertisements is found to be more a practical effort to reduce loss along property lines through offering rewards and anonymity and less a tactical effort to solve mostly violent crimes or a symbolic endeavour consistent with the promotion of ‘law and order’ ideology. Through new partnerships with CS, various partners including private insurance gain symbolic but also practical risk management benefits. Anonymization promises to reduce risk to ‘tipsters’ and moral risk to police and partners. A graduated system of rewards seeks to manage risk while encouraging risk among ‘tipsters’ and is linked to moral imaginings of the tipster as ‘good citizen’ and ‘criminal’. Risk and morality are therefore linked in this context. These techniques of governance are deployed together to render the policing of property and moral risks possible as these techniques are themselves governed. CS does not simply aid law enforcement. Rather, in CS law is at once a way in which these techniques are governed and a barrier to their deployment. These findings have implications for the sociology of governance and law and move beyond previous research on CS.