The Digilantes

Abstract

Interviews with people who operate criminal record websites, crime watch networks, and social media feeds illustrate how today’s users of criminal records extend well beyond criminal justice officials, data brokers, statisticians, and employers. Instead, civilians use criminal justice data to create online communities that promise to do better report on, respond to, and prevent crime compared to existing structures. These “digilantes” use criminal records, arrest logs, and booking photos in their quest to create better forms of citizen journalism, victim support networks, and neighborhood watch networks. There is a tension centered around whether digilantes’ access to criminal records benefits broader society or whether publishing already public information harms subjects even more. What seems like a privacy violation to a website subject is simultaneously viewed as a social benefit by those who circulate criminal records.