Sibling Governance: Strategies of Formerly Incarcerated Individuals Engaging in Third-Party Policing

• In Event: Roundtable: Redemption and Reentry

Abstract

Third-party policing, characterized by public-private partnerships that assign policing duties to non-police actors for crime prevention, extends formal crime control while bypassing traditional police involvement. Despite its prevalence in US cities, few studies have examined the dynamics of third-party policing and its place within theories of urban governance. A unique example where third-party policing occurs is in community violence intervention programs led by formerly incarcerated individuals, where urban guardians–often referred to as community ambassadors, violence disruptors, or peace officers–control or prevent crime where offenses are likely to occur. Drawing insights from literature on street-level bureaucracies, narrative criminology, and urban governance, I introduce the concept of sibling governance, where formerly incarcerated individuals engaged in third-party policing identify points of solidarity with those they police through rapport-building and leveraging confidential information to convince individuals to refrain from illegal activity, making behavior change more attractive and avoiding involving the police. Sibling governance differs from previous literature that positions third-party policing as punitive or welfare state actors, thereby contributing to the broader neoliberal regulatory system of urban governance and linking literature on neighborhood social control, narrative criminology, and bureaucracy theory.

Author

• Marisol Zarate, Stanford University