Cycles of Silence: Police–Citizen Cooperation in Communities with Criminal Groups

Original

Cycles of Silence: Police–Citizen Cooperation in Communities with Criminal Groups

Andrew Cesare Miller

Abstract

Many states struggle to provide justice for victims of violent crime, partly due to criminal groups preventing citizens from sharing information with the police. Cycles of silence theory posits that criminal groups constrain witness information-sharing by making community norms favoring cooperation with the police appear weaker to citizens than they are. This article tests the theory in the markets of Lagos, Nigeria, where shopkeepers are exposed to violence by “area boy” crews. According to survey results, shopkeepers perceive that fewer witnesses would share information with the police than are willing to do so, and as a result, the average witness is predicted to share significantly less information than they would have if they were aware of the latent strength of cooperation norms. A virtual reality vignette embedded in the survey shows that rendering a crime reporting tip line anonymous and creating awareness of other shopkeepers cooperating can increase witness information-sharing.