Abstract
WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention (WNCP) groups are popular in the Netherlands. As a basic assumption, this kind of digital neighbourhood watch could prevent crime, but what is the evidence? Drawing on a mixture of qualitative research and a review of additional publications, we conclude that WNCP groups stimulate social cohesion rather than prevent crime. We reach our conclusion by applying the evaluation EMMIE framework – an acronym for Effect, Mechanisms, Moderators, Implementation and Economics – to the available data. A point for further discussion is the limited scope of the economic dimension. Moral costs must be calculated, too, as WNCP groups tend to deepen divisions between groups of citizens and fuel exclusionary practices in the name of community safety.
Highlights
One of Rembrandt van Rijn’s most renowned paintings is the Night Watch (1642), which portrays a civic guard marching off to patrol the city of Amsterdam
As a result, is much needed if the WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention (WNCP) groups are to thrive: SAAR assumes that the police react swiftly to citizens’ emergency calls, but when officers do not intervene due to other pressing obligations, citizens ‘can feel unheard and unsupported, which can lead to a lack of trust in the police’ (Pridmore et al, 2019: 111)
The starting point of the research was a visit on 11 October 2016 to a small seminar about WhatsApp crime prevention attended by various municipal representatives
Summary
One of Rembrandt van Rijn’s most renowned paintings is the Night Watch (1642), which portrays a civic guard marching off to patrol the city of Amsterdam. As a result, is much needed if the WNCP groups are to thrive: SAAR assumes that the police react swiftly to citizens’ emergency calls, but when officers do not intervene due to other pressing obligations, citizens ‘can feel unheard and unsupported, which can lead to a lack of trust in the police’ (Pridmore et al, 2019: 111) Another concern is that people should not do police work themselves and should certainly not take the law in their own hands. Building on the aforementioned realist-inspired Context, Mechanisms, Outcome pattern Configurations model (Pawson and Tilley, 1994), the founders of EMMIE add that mediators (or ‘intermediate outcomes’ bridging an intervention and the ultimate outcome), moderators (or ‘variables that may explain variation in outcomes across different studies’) and budget considerations should be taken into account to equip policy makers and practitioners with evidence-based information (Johnson et al, 2015: 462–463) This leads us to explain the second acronym of our paper. Costs and benefits should refer to financial issues, but to moral and social considerations too
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