This article explores Crime Stoppers’ use of CCTV images as a node of a surveillant assemblage via analysis of a sample of Crime Stoppers advertisements deploying CCTV images supplemented by interviews and other qualitative procedures. Advertisements using images are becoming more prevalent and rely on complex textual narratives and the CCTV image format to construct crime for public consumption to generate ‘tips’. The advertisements capture a narrow range of ‘street crime’ to the benefit of private business and to the neglect of pervasive and serious conduct affecting the less powerful. The convergence of Crime Stoppers and CCTV surveillance is found to have unanticipated and ironic consequences regarding deterrence and identification, to befit a form of ‘counter-law’, and to demonstrate potential to harm individuals and visible minorities. Theoretical implications of this analysis for understanding assumptions about the relation between image and the Truth of crime, governance, and surveillance are discussed.

No abstract

Public police now use online and social media spaces as forums for communication. Drawing from discourse and semiotic analysis, and contributing to literature on police image management, we analyze police Instagram communications from five Canadian cities. Focusing on public police services’ Instagram posts, which are more indebted to visual communication than Twitter and Facebook, we examine the ways police communications frame community and diversity. Arguing that these communications resemble the fantastical authenticity found in other Instagram communications, we show how police mobilize images of community and diversity on Instagram to create positive affective relations with community. We argue that these communications amplify policing myths and operate to enhance police legitimacy. In the discussion, we assess what our findings mean for literatures on public police social media communications and policing myths.

No abstract

Corporate security units have emerged in municipal governments across North America. They resemble corporate security units found in private corporations, yet they are publically funded. Presently little is known about how the work of municipal corporate security units differs from that of public police, private contract security, or corporate security in the private sector. Though previous research has examined attitudes of public police toward private contract security, and vice versa, corporate security attitudes have been overlooked, as has how public sector corporate security personnel compare themselves to their counterparts in private corporations. This article extends analyses of ‘legitimation work’ of security and policing agents by examining what MCS personnel claim about public police, private corporate security, and private contract security. We show that MCS personnel claim the public police officers have a different skill set and possess limitations that MCS units overcome; that private corporate security is said to be driven more by a profit motive and is less accountable; and that private contract security agents have less expertise and are of lesser value than MCS personnel. Finally, we explore implications of this study for future research in policing and security.