ABSTRACT
Some reactions to crime and disorder, or to fear of crime and disorder, involve citizens in autonomous forms of self-policing: those which are undertaken, in the main, without the cooperation or involvement of public police organizations. The first section of this chapter considers some examples of such autonomous activity, and the varied circumstances in which it may arise. In the second section some of the empirical evidence relating to one form of autonomous self-policing is reviewed-the citizen street or subway patrol. The final section makes a political and theoretical assessment of autonomous self-policing.
