Crime Stoppers or Crimestoppers is a community program that assists people in providing anonymous information about criminal activity. Often managed by non-profit groups or the police, it operates separately from the emergency telephone number system or other standard methods of contacting police. [1] This allows a person to provide crime-solving assistance to the authorities without being directly involved in the investigation process. Founded in the United States in 1976 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Crime Stoppers later caught on in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom.[2][3][4]
The authorities, especially the police, occasionally rely on information from the community about criminal activities or events. Crime Stoppers was developed to enable the public to participate without fear of reprisal and to make it easier for witnesses to volunteer information anonymously.[5][6][1][7] There have been challenges to this aspect.
- ^ a b Profile Crime Stoppers USA.
- ^ MacAleese, Greg (2016-07-12). Crime Stoppers: The Inside Story. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781533259721.
- ^ Millar, Cal (2014-08-07). What Is Crime Stoppers. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781500645939.
- ^ Lincoln, Robyn; McGillivray, Laura (2019-06-07). "Citizen surveil-labour: Analysing Crime Stoppers and its alliance of police, media, and publics". Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology. 52 (2): 291–307. doi:10.1177/0004865818786761. ISSN 0004-8658. S2CID 150315403.
- ^ Give information anonymously Crimestoppers UK.
- ^ Privacy policy Crimestoppers UK.
- ^ How it Works Archived 2020-10-30 at the Wayback Machine Crime Stoppers of Metro Alabama.