Citizen-led digital policing and democratic norms: The case of self-styled paedophile hunters

Responsibilisation and citizen engagement: the democratisation of policing?

Citizen involvement in policing of crime is not new: from citizen patrols, to private detectives, to vigilantes, citizens have always been engaged in activities that resemble, crossover with and sometimes seek to displace policing by the state. Over the last 20 years or so, the involvement of citizens in policing has been actively encouraged by governments in developed countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as a way of improving public security without investing greater resources (Garland, 1996, 2002; Nalla et al., 2018; Neyroud, 2001; Terpstra, 2008; van der Land, 2014). As Bayley and Shearing (1996) put it, ‘the police cannot successfully prevent or investigate crime without the willing participation of the public, therefore police should transform communities from being passive consumers of police protection to active co-producers of public safety’. Garland’s seminal analysis of ‘responsibilisation’ described it as the means by which ‘government seek[s] to act upon crime not in a direct fashion through state agencies (police, courts, prisons, social work etc), but instead . . . indirectly, seeking to activate action on the part of non-state agencies and organisations’ (Garland, 1996: 452).

This section examines critically the idea that responsibilisation is straightforwardly democratising of policing. It argues instead that citizen-led policing gives rise to a previously underexplored tension between the realisation of democratic norms. The more proactive and independent of the state citizen involvement in policing is, the more it promotes values of direct or participatory democracy such as empowerment, self-determination and inclusivity. However, this comes at an inevitable cost to norms and values of representative democracy, such as accountability, transparency and the rule of law. This hypothesis forms the framework for the normative analysis of the empirical findings that will follow in section ‘Paedophile hunters: civilian police, or vigilantes?’.

Responsibilisation is often presented by governments and police as a win–win approach to achieving more effective, legitimate and cohesive policing. The cited advantages of a responsibilized citizenry are both prudential (it improves the efficiency of policing) and political or normative (active citizen participation in the production of security improves the legitimacy of policing and contributes to important social goods like social capital) (Innes, 2010). On the one hand, responsibilisation can reduce the gap between public expectations of security and the capacity of the police to deliver – a gap that has increased over the last decade of economic austerity – by activating citizens to step in and take on policing tasks for free (De Vries and Smilda, 2014; Reisig and Giacomazzi, 1998; Sharp et al., 2008). On the other, it can boost legitimacy and trust both in police and between citizens, as it encourages different stakeholders to work together for the benefit of all (Sharp et al., 2008). In sum, citizen involvement ‘can allow the police to leverage their assets by tapping into the knowledge, the resources, and the abilities of organisations and individuals outside of law enforcement’ while ‘working with communities to build trust, legitimacy, and accountability’ (Sklansky, 2014: 349–351).

Responsibilisation is also often claimed to be inherently democratising of ‘once police-exclusive functions of security’ into ‘shared responsibility and resources’ (Nhan et al., 2017: 344) and therefore worth pursuing (Wood, 2006). As Skinns describes in relation to community partnerships, this interpretation of responsibilisaiton ‘suggests a new model of participatory liberal democracy, which gives a voice to pluralism and diversity and restores public faith and their consent to being governed’ (Skinns, 2003). It is argued that responsibilisation enables communities to be active determinants rather than passive recipients of their own security (Leach, 2003). Thus, it has the potential to correct a status quo in which police-citizen engagement is too often ‘done “to” rather than “with” communities’ (MyHill, 2006). Indeed, where citizens are provided with opportunities to reclaim their right to participate in the production of their own security this promotes the ‘sharing of the right to participate in public affairs “among the people”’ (Held, 1987). Finally, responsibilisation promises inclusivity, seeking to ‘motivate and enable marginalised groups to specify their own desired security systems, and hence provide them with voice, choice and self-direction’ (Boutellier and van Steden, 2011, p. 5).

Yet alongside this optimism there are concerns about the deployment of the responsibilisation agenda in a neoliberal context to justify and even moralise deep budget cuts to policing and other public services (Spiller and L’Hoiry, 2019; van der Land, 2014) and, more pertinently to the focus of this article, about the potentially negative impact of citizen-led policing on the realisation of other, equally important democratic norms in policing, especially those of accountability and transparency (Boutellier and van Steden, 2011: 218; see also Terpstra, 2008 and Dupont, 2004). With respect to accountability in particular, it has been argued that taking responsibility for security implies not only ‘the responsibility of individuals and organisations to take care in managing their own crime risks’ but also the responsibility ‘to assume a proportion of the blame should they fail so to do’ (Loader, 2002: 331). In other words, genuinely democratic responsibilisation should entail the devolution of duties to both engage in efforts to promote public safety and security, and maintain standards of transparency and accountability when doing so, aiming for balance in the inevitably persisting tension between these values. But the ‘mechanisms of representative government’ (Garland, 2002: 596) through which standards of accountability and transparency are achieved and maintained in state policing remain difficult to establish in the context of plural policing initiatives. As a result, concerns have been expressed that encouraging citizens to take on policing roles involves ‘the transference of governmental functions to barely accountable agencies’ (Shearing, 1996), while the state still ‘holds the unique position to set binding guidelines so that democratic governance can be guaranteed’ (Boutellier and van Steden, 2011: 14). Democratic accountability can be further undermined when government security strategies shift responsibility and for public security from their own shoulders to certain minority communities associated with criminality and then demand accountability from them, as has arguably occurred with counter-terrorism and Muslim communities in the United Kingdom (Ragazzi, 2016).

As section ‘Paedophile hunters: civilian police, or vigilantes?’ will attempt to demonstrate, both the optimism and the anxieties about responsibilisation articulated in this section are well-founded in the case of paedophile hunting and imply the need for reforming strategies of engagement and influence by police. To get there however, we must first examine how responsibilisation manifests itself in the form of paedophile hunters, and consider how the authorities have responded.

Paedophile hunters: methods, motivations and police responses

At the time of writing no systematic mapping or study of paedophile hunting groups either within a single country or internationally has been published. However, their presence has been noted and commented upon in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States (Owen et al., 2017) and Russia (Loginov, 2013) and a small number of scholarly case studies of specific groups have been carried out (Campbell, 2016; Huey et al., 2012). The absence of a comprehensive profile of these groups constrains the extent to which generalisations can be accurately drawn. The research undertaken for this article does not attempt to address this gap comprehensively. Rather, its aim is to obtain an understanding of the typical motivations, methods and modus operandi, of paedophile hunters, the moral justifications for and criticisms of their activities and the police response. For these purposes, data were drawn from three kinds of sources. The first analysed is social media (YouTube and Facebook profiles and sites), and websites produced by paedophile hunting groups themselves. These were identified through searches of specific group names found in media reports, and on YouTube by selecting among suggestions of the site’s algorithms. Social media sites and the personal websites of paedophile hunting groups are by far the greatest source of insight into their activities and motivations, primarily because they use such sites to coordinate, carry out and justify their activities, ‘advertise’ their successes, respond to critics and build a reputation for themselves. The content of these sites was coded into the following categories: divergences and commonalities in the modus operandi and investigative standards of such groups; self-justifications in the face of public and police criticism of them as vigilantes; appeals to and attempts to demonstrate democratic legitimacy including claims to have a public mandate and attempts to practice elements of transparency, and discussion between such groups about the standards and conduct of others.

The second is online text and broadcast media produced by journalistic outlets reporting on paedophile hunting and on police responses to them, which were identified through Google news and Nexis searches for ‘paedophile hunters’ on a weekly basis for 2 years (2016–2018) reflecting the dynamic nature of this field. Online media is the site of many reports and critical discussion of such groups, because public interest in the topic ensures intense media scrutiny, with new articles and features published in the United Kingdom on a daily basis. Debates between police and paedophile hunters have also played out in these forums, as police attempt to assert control over an agenda set by hunting groups and counter a narrative that has seen the latter gain very strong public support. These sources were coded into categories that mirrored those used for hunter-generated data, but represented the stance of the authorities, in particular the police, on the risks and benefits of paedophile hunting and its compatibility with ‘traditional’ policing and on which stance – collaborative or abolitionist – police should adopt towards such groups.

However, police are less forthcoming publicly than paedophile hunters and for that reason supplementary data was collected. A focus group was held in Jan 2016 involving 40 European police officers, local authorities, academics, tech experts, and one UK-based paedophile hunting group. Participants were engaged in a ‘world café’ format which enabled two rounds of small group (six person/group) discussions on the ethical, legal, and social implications of citizen-led digital policing as well as two plenary sessions in which group ideas were shared. ⁴ Groups were mixed to enable exchange of ideas between diverse stakeholders. The frank and confidential setting gave police the opportunity to express views that may diverge from the official position. Handwritten notes were taken and these were analysed to identify attitudes towards paedophile hunters and their activities, as above. As the aim was to ascertain the views of professionals in the field, the approach privileged their perspective and as such was influenced by the narrative approach in social science research. Finally, an analysis was undertaken of three official ‘cease and desist’ letters sent in 2017 from UK police forces to paedophile hunters, one of which was posted online by a ‘hunter’, and two of which were shared by police in confidence with the author. As will be discussed, these reveal some of the contradictory stances being taken by individual forces towards such groups.

Paedophile hunters pose as children online in order to trap paedophiles and bring them to justice, ultimately by meeting them and confronting them about their behaviour face-to-face. The review of their self-generated video content online shows that their undercover ‘sting’ tactics involve three main stages: posing as children online, arranging to meet paedophiles and then confronting the suspected offender with the evidence gathered from chatlogs before handing them over to police. The first of these stages involves adopting a false identity as a (typically female) child online, often on a social media platform frequented by children. The second stage involves chatting under the assumed identity with suspected paedophiles and eventually agreeing to meet them. The chat and any photographs exchanged are saved by the ‘hunters’, to provide as evidence to police.

The third stage involves meeting suspected offenders, upon which many groups perform citizens’ arrests, keeping them in custody until the police arrive. Many, though not all, also film the humiliating encounters and post the videos online, often broadcasting the name and face of the suspected offender to the public. One video, re-aired on a BBC documentary from 2014, showed a suspected offender being confronted at his parents’ home in front of his family and pregnant girlfriend. Despite there being no implication of their involvement in any crime, the names and faces of the family and girlfriend were also posted online, leading to a terrifying barrage of threats and abuse from people in their local community. In Russia, violence is often threatened and sometimes even carried out, but in the United Kingdom and other countries this appears rare. ⁵ Though videos posted online reveal that ‘hunters’ appear to relish the public shaming of suspects, they nearly always conceal their own identity in these videos, blurring out their faces in order to preserve their anonymity. However, a small minority actively seek publicity and recognition, acting as the protagonists or ‘heroes’ of the film. Many groups have substantial followings on Facebook and YouTube and receive hundreds of messages of support – and some criticism – from members of the public.

The online research for this article revealed that a notable subset ⁶ of paedophile hunting groups in the United Kingdom diverge from the majority in their attempts to practice aspects of professionalism ⁷ in their work. In particular, they develop expertise in criminal justice procedures and laws of evidence, grooming and entrapment; vet and train new members; publish mission statements; and report conviction rates. Some have charity status, accept donations, and some even sell branded merchandise to raise funds. ⁸ Some groups show a measure of respect for the human rights of suspects, waiting for convictions before naming offenders or uploading videos to the web, while others point their cameras at the ground during the entire operation in order to avoid revealing faces or private addresses, or indeed do not upload videos at all. Some also attempt to promote such good practices among other groups, as well as to enforce respect for them. For example, some paedophile hunters publicly criticise and indeed seek to ostracise from the hunting ‘community’ ⁹ those hunters who fail to maintain those standards of evidence and practice ¹⁰ that have been identified as conducive to successful prosecutions, and thereby damage the reputation of all. ¹¹ While this indicates a subculture of paedophile hunting with aspirations to professionalisation and leadership, it is difficult to assess in practice how influential they are.

As has previously been observed by Campbell (2016), many paedophile hunters seek explicitly to distance themselves from vigilantes, and to contest categorisation as such. Some describe themselves instead as ‘investigative journalists’ (‘Stinson Hunter’, Channel 4, 2014) or, more commonly, a variation on ‘citizens doing our bit to protect kids’ (Woodhouse, 2018). Indeed, in justifying their actions they claim that they are stepping in to address the lack of policing capacity to effectively pursue the vast numbers of offenders currently active online. As the paedophile hunting group that participated in the focus group complained, police tell them to stop but their actions demonstrate a tacit acceptance of the value of their work: police respond to their calls, arrest the suspects they have delivered, and rely on the dossiers of evidence and witness statements they provide when mounting prosecutions (not to mention taking the credit in terms of crime detection rates). In other words, paedophile hunters see themselves as filling a security gap in society that leaves vulnerable people exposed to exploitation and abuse and which cannot be addressed by the authorities.

Turning now to the police response to paedophile hunting, we can see that this is claim is not often denied by those authorities. On the contrary, there is general acknowledgement by UK police that, in the words of the lead officer for child protection, they simply ‘cannot cope’ with the huge rise in sex offences online (BBC News, 2017a). In January 2018, a national inquiry reported a 700% increase in the number of referrals of online child sexual abuse to London’s Metropolitan Police since 2014, a trend which the head of the inquiry said ‘is likely to continue for the foreseeable future’ (The Guardian, 2018). As the ex-head of the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command echoed, ‘there are far too few police officers to be dealing with child abuse on the Internet. it’s I think it’s fair to say it’s a tsunami . . . It’s overwhelming . . . (Gamble, 2017). This is further borne out by 2016 UK policing inspectorate report, which found that, due in part to the rise in online sex offending and in part to deep government cuts to policing, 2,700 registered sex offenders in England and Wales had not been risk assessed by police officers responsible for their supervision in the community. (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, 2016).

Yet policing has, for the most part, not welcomed the contribution of paedophile hunters. Police participants in the focus group expressed a preference for members of the public to restrict their activities to being the ‘eyes and ears’ of policing: informing and passing on information, but not taking proactive measures themselves. This was confirmed by the paedophile hunting group, who reported in the focus group that the response they most often received from police amounted to: ‘Thank you. But don’t do it again’. In the United Kingdom, the official policing line is that paedophile hunters are both misguided and dangerous. Indeed, as police lead for child protection said of paedophile hunters: ‘I would encourage them all to stop’ (Bailey, 2017). Internal guidance to detectives across the United Kingdom reflects this, instructing police to crack down on hunting groups by issuing them with ‘cease and desist’ notices and investigating them for use of illegal methods such as entrapment or harassment, which some forces have begun to do systematically (Hamilton and Swerling, 2018). For example, the Police Service of Northern Ireland are reviewing all legal cases involving paedophile hunters with a view to identifying grounds for prosecution (Kearney, 2018).

In support of this uncompromising stance, police participants in focus groups claimed that paedophile hunters are a liability to the policing of child sexual offences, in at least three ways. First, because they risk compromising ongoing operations by potentially targeting offenders who may already be under investigation by police, and thereby inadvertently alerting them to the fact that they are suspects, allowing them to destroy evidence. Second, because they risk wasting court time and allowing dangerous individuals to go free by employing poor evidential practices that will not hold up in a trial. And third because they pose a risk to human rights by failing to undertake risk assessments and protective measures before acting, a fact which has led to at least eight suicides of people targeted by hunters in the United Kingdom as well as the public humiliation and ostracising of suspects’ families (Burke, 2019).

In addition to these concerns, which focus on the dangerous and amateur nature of paedophile hunting methods, the focus groups revealed a further concern, namely that paedophile hunting methods divert limited criminal justice resources, such as court time, away from the protection of the most vulnerable. For example, on their websites and Facebook pages, some paedophile hunting groups report luring targets in on adult dating apps, or by pretending they are 19 in the first instance and only later, once a relationship has been struck up, ‘admitting’ that they are in fact 14 and therefore legally speaking, a child. In contrast, police reported that they themselves prioritise contact offenders with access to children. In other words, paedophile hunters tend to catch low-priority offenders, or even people who may not have offended had they not been given the opportunity by the predator hunter. According to police participants, this is not only an issue of entrapment, it is also a matter of the systematic large-scale diversion of scarce resources away from prolific and dangerous contact offenders to, in the words of one UK officer ‘the low hanging fruit’.

Yet a significant minority of police in the United Kingdom support more collaborative engagement with paedophile hunting groups. For example, in 2017, the ex-head of the United Kingdom’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command proposed that policing should fund a police-trained corps of 1500 specialist volunteers to meet the threat of child exploitation and abuse online (Gamble, 2017). More recently, in 2018 Nottinghamshire police, one of 43 forces in the United Kingdom, declared that it was braking from national advice, was working with 15 paedophile hunting groups and would seek to engage further with them. In support of this, Nottinghamshire’s elected Police and Crime Commissioner said, ‘[t]his isn’t going to go away. I can’t stop people doing this, and I think we’ve got to have a sensible, difficult discussion about what we might jointly do together’ (Sandeman, 2018). And least two UK forces ¹² are embedding instructions for paedophile hunters on how to improve the standards of their operations and therefore avoid prosecution into what are ostensibly cease and desist notices.

The impact of these more open approaches is difficult to assess. In contrast, it does appear that hardline threats of legal action have driven improvements in standards for some paedophile hunters. For example, in 2018, one paedophile hunting group cited threats of prosecution as the reason for their decision by to stop placing decoys in adult dating apps (rather than kids’ forums), ¹³ and to stop streaming stings online. Similarly, one of the most professional paedophile hunting groups reformed its financial management after a judge ruled that its account-keeping was insufficiently transparent and rigorous. ¹⁴

Paedophile hunters: civilian police, or vigilantes?

How, in the light of the descriptions just provided, should we understand the phenomenon of paedophile hunting? Are hunting groups best conceptualised as ‘responsibilised citizens’ ‘doing their bit’ to protecting the safety and security of their communities, and democratising policing for the benefit of all, as many would themselves insist? Or are they vigilantes whose actions are both dangerous and undermine the rule of law, fairness and accountability, as they are more often presented by the media, police and current theory (Campbell, 2016; Huey et al., 2012; Myles and et al., 2016; Owen et al., 2017; Trottier, 2017)? In fact, as this section aims to show, paedophile hunters resist categorisation as either vigilantes or civilian police; rather they exhibit aspects of and deploy methods used by both – a fact which has significant implications for the way police should deal with them.

While there is no single authoritative definition of vigilantism, the following tripartite taxonomy developed by Huey et al., (2012) is a good place to start. The benefits include the fact that it conceptualises vigilantism for the digital world and also that it contrasts vigilantism usefully with the benign kind of civilian policing that police in the media and in the focus group clearly view as an ideal.

Huey et al’.s understanding of ‘civilian policing’ reflects notions of ‘public citizen schemes’ (Sharp et al., 2008) or ‘responsible citizens’ (Loader, 2002) passively passing intelligence onto the experts to deal with. This is also reflected in the UK policing model of ‘community engagement’, which is described in official guidance as ‘the process of enabling citizens and communities to participate in policing at their chosen level . . . This ranges from providing information and assurance, to empowering them to identify and implement solutions to local problems and influence strategic priorities and decisions’ (College of Policing, 2017). Both here, and in Huey et al.’s definition, responsibility, authority, legitimacy and expertise in policing are bestowed by police on individuals and communities rather than proactively pursued, earned, or lost by citizens themselves.

Paedophile hunters (and indeed many other citizen-led digital policing initiatives) depart from this model of civilian or public policing in a number of distinct ways. Rather than being passively ‘responsibilised’ by the authorities, they are driven by their own sense of justice to act where they perceive the authorities are falling short. Rather than being ‘enrolled’ by police, they define and shape their own security agendas and priorities. Rather than being ‘enabled’ by police, they take advantage of technological opportunities to develop skills and expertise in the performance of policing tasks normally considered the exclusive prerogative of those authorities (Campbell, 2016). And rather than deriving legitimacy indirectly through authorisation by police, they appeal directly to the ‘public’ via social media such as Facebook and YouTube, claiming a democratic mandate from the number of ‘likes’ and supportive comments received. The College of Policing’s paternalistic approach to community and citizen engagement fails entirely to acknowledge these kind of proactive, innovative initiatives and so is an inadequate basis on which to ground any kind of strategy of engagement with such groups.

Yet the fact that paedophile hunters and other citizen-led digital policing initiatives cannot be accommodated within existing notions of civilian policing does not imply that should be understood instead as vigilantes, for they also depart in important ways from existing models of vigilantism. Traditionally, the emergence of vigilante groups has been linked to the existence of persistent and systematic failures of police to address crime, itself a symptom of weak, illegitimate and ineffective state institutions. As Schuberth observes, ‘vigilantes tend to be associated with state fragility, as vigilantism is commonly attributed to a ‘state’s apparent inability to deal effectively with [. . .] theft and other crime’ so that ‘vigilantism is likely to occur when the state is unable or unwilling to fulfil its part of the social contract’ (Schuberth, 2013: 303). Yet while this article has suggested that paedophile hunters are acting to fill a security gap, it remains true that hunters ultimately refer their work upwards, handing over evidence and suspects to the police in the (well-founded) expectation that justice will ultimately be done. Indeed, the success of their modus operandi depends not only on media visibility and the opportunities offered by the digital world, but also on the existence of a strong and legitimate state that can see their activities through to conviction. Unlike both historical typologies of vigilantism (Johnston, 1996) and newer models of digital vigilantism (Trottier, 2017), both of which describe groups that seize the opportunities presented by weak institutions in order to pursue their own personal security agendas, paedophile hunters rely on the presence of a responsive, uncorrupt, legitimate and effective police service and on the existence of reliable and fair institutions of criminal justice that will punish the wrongdoing they reveal, even as they sometimes criticise the shortcomings and resource constraints of that system. In this, they are paradigmatic of contemporary forms of citizen-led digital policing in the West.

A further aspect in which paedophile hunters diverge from vigilantism is that their agendas are those of the state: ultimately, they aim to uphold law and order. Unlike citizen patrols and other groups which ‘have a tendency to transform into militias and gangs’ (Schuberth, 2013: 303; see also Leach, 2003), paedophile hunters’ goals are clearly defined and limited to the policing of child sexual offences. They typically demonstrate neither alienation from police nor a desire to eventually supplant or challenge them, and there are no broader ambitions for power.

Yet other aspects of paedophile hunting are more akin to vigilantism. Most important among these is the absence of democratic accountability and transparency in much of paedophile hunting practice. For example, while paedophile hunters are keen to publicise their successes – in the form of videos, ‘statistics’ on their conviction rates (often claimed to be ‘100%’) ¹⁵ or other reports online – none record how many of their ‘stings’ fail to result in a conviction, nor do any publish the number of times their activities have resulted in individuals destroying evidence or committing suicide. Much like the vigilante-like citizen patrols observed by Leach (2003), paedophile hunters have a sense of popular mandate through public support expressed on social media, but ‘no natural affinity to democracy in the sense of popular accountability’ making no efforts to scrutinise systematically or demonstrate to others their own fairness or effectiveness (Leach, 2003: 281). As a result, the public are able to assess reliably the overall impact of paedophile hunting work on public safety. ¹⁶

As this indicates, the claims of paedophile hunters to democratic legitimacy are, like those of traditional vigilantes, weak and much weaker than those of state police. Police are obliged to report their successes and failures to the public and they are held accountable via specially appointed oversight mechanisms. Moreover, it is a condition of democratic legitimacy that police act to protect the rights of all citizens, including the families of offenders and indeed offenders themselves (Ripstein, 2017). The vast majority of paedophile hunters demonstrate no consideration for such matters. Even those who do refrain from publicising the names and images of suspected offenders fail to practice anything approaching a public duty of care towards them.

What is more, unlike police, who are required to prioritise their targets in accordance with the amount of harm that is threatened and the vulnerability of the potential victim, paedophile hunters have no systematic or democratically determined method of prioritising their investigations. Rather, their targets are defined by the scope of their own resources and skills: they simply catch whoever is reckless enough to fall into their particular trap and, as mentioned in the previous section, this means they end up ‘catching’ many less serious offenders than the police would target. Thus, the actions of even the most conscientious paedophile hunters threaten to reorder police priorities in ways that are potentially disruptive of and detrimental to transparent, accountable and democratically authorised processes. This aspect of their approach too, is more akin to vigilantism than many ‘hunters’ would be prepared to admit.

Understanding the ways in which paedophile hunting and other citizen-led digital policing initiatives depart from existing typologies does not necessarily imply the need to create another, hybrid category in which to house them. Ultimately, it is not the identity of such groups as ‘civilian police’ or ‘digital vigilantes’ that is of moral significance, but the effectiveness, legitimacy, fairness and transparency of the aims they adopt, the methods they deploy, and the standards they adhere to. By focusing on these aspects of paedophile hunting, this section has attempted to provide a basis from which to begin exploring how their practices might be improved to the benefit of all.

Paedophile hunters, police engagement and democratic legitimacy

Huey et al. have argued convincingly that ‘there is clearly a need for public officials to create regulatory and other strategies by which they can direct public involvement in ways that reduce the potential for harm . . . while maximizing opportunities’. The potential for such strategies in relation to paedophile hunters are now considered and some tentative proposals are put forward. It is argued that an authoritarian, didactic approach by police is likely not only to fail to stop paedophile hunters, but also to undermine public confidence in and the democratic legitimacy of policing.

Paedophile hunters both address an area of offending that people care about and achieve significant security gains in the form of successful prosecutions. As their activities become more mainstream and greater numbers move in to define the security agenda in this area, police are increasingly likely to find themselves reacting to that agenda rather than setting it themselves. And, as public awareness of the successes of paedophile hunting grows, legitimate questions are likely to be asked about why police are discouraging people from protecting children when they themselves have admitted that they are unable to do so adequately. The work of such groups may never be as legitimate, effective or fair as the work of state police. But ignoring them or going after them aggressively will not make them stop. Instead, as Sharp et al. (2008: 256) argued in relation to other successful civilian policing practices, it ‘will only contribute to undermining public confidence, which along with concerns about [police] effectiveness, will add to the debate regarding [police] legitimacy as a force of law and order, and as a service to ensure community safety and security’. In other words, a continued policy of blanket active discouragement of paedophile hunters risks long-term erosion of confidence in the policing of child sexual offences, indicating that police have become desensitised to a crime about which there is a great deal of public concern, and thus that they are out of touch.

More subtly but just as importantly, refusing to engage with paedophile hunters damages police legitimacy by suggesting that police view the pursuit of public safety as the professional privilege of the expert few (namely, themselves), rather than as a public good that all citizens can and should actively contribute to. When police ‘police the boundaries of policing’ (Trottier, 2017: 64) in this proprietorial way, they express an ‘aloof and arrogant’ attitude towards the public (Sklansky, 2014: 352) that is itself elitist and undemocratic.

Furthermore, a refusal to engage with paedophile hunters risks missing opportunities to shape and influence their methods in ways that could render them more transparent, accountable and respectful of the rule of law. As has been argued in relation to the involvement of the private sector in the provision of public security, active engagement of police with citizen-led digital policing might present an opportunity to extend the reach of public norms into the sphere of civil society (Freeman, 2003), by encouraging them to commit themselves to traditionally public goals in accordance with democratic standards and principles.

How might this be done? The first step would be to distinguish between different methods used by paedophile hunting groups and selectively reward and discourage the best and worst among them respectively. Currently, the official police line in the United Kingdom is effectively to lump all paedophile hunters together and then associate the entire category with the bad practices employed by some. This has the effect of concealing the potential for some paedophile hunters to be genuinely helpful partners to police in the co-production of security. It also offers those paedophile hunters who are engaged in harmful, vigilante-like naming and shaming practices little incentive to reform beyond the minimum required to keep themselves safe from prosecution. After all, as has been shown above, some paedophile hunters are keen to conform voluntarily to regulations and some have even made serious efforts to establish and disseminate higher standards of conduct among the hunting community. This suggests that there may be a real potential for police to guide, educate and encourage some paedophile hunters, through initiatives such as a specialist volunteer corps, or certification, ¹⁷ or both. Heavy-handed threats of prosecution may still be appropriate for some groups. But their persistence in employing dangerous or irresponsible methods should not be taken as a conclusive reason to rule out engagement with those who are willing to raise standards.