Citizen Policing Groups and Their Theoretical Conceptualisation

Abstract

Citizen groups engaged in policing are one part of the pluralisation of security production. In Germany, there are different kinds of citizen groups, e. g. police volunteers, neighbourhood watch groups and patrol groups that partly display a proximity to vigilantism. So far hardly any scientific research has focused on the breadth in variety of these groups. Therefore, this article will show how the different forms of citizen policing groups can be located within three theoretically derived dimensions. Such a heuristic is a theoretically guided approach and is especially useful for capturing the differences between specific citizen policing groups.