Insider Authority: Formerly Incarcerated Ambassadors and the Transformation of Street-Level Governance in Violence Intervention Programs

• In Event: Criminalized and Surveilled Behaviors: Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Literature on policing and mass incarceration has gained significant attention in recent years, yet a lesser-known third sector of crime control has emerged that operates alongside—and at times in place of—traditional policing. Known as third-party policing, this apparatus of crime prevention and security relies on public-private partnerships that delegate policing responsibilities to non-police actors (Garland 2001). Despite its prevalence in US cities, few studies have examined the dynamics of third-party policing and its place within theories of urban governance. This paper examines one example of third-party policing: formerly incarcerated community ambassadors who lead violence intervention efforts and regulate public space in high-crime areas. Drawing on scholarship in street-level bureaucracy, narrative criminology, and urban governance, I introduce the concept of insider authority—a frontline orientation in which actors mobilize shared social and biographical proximity to govern populations from which they themselves emerge. By cultivating interactional legitimacy through solidarity, rapport, and resource brokerage, ambassadors often redirect behavior while seeking to avert formal criminal legal intervention. Insider authority demonstrates how biography can function as a mechanism of regulatory power, drawing from punitive and welfare urban government theories to show that frontline governance operates beyond institutional position alone.

Author

• Marisol Zarate, Stanford University