2025/10/01 by Daniel Nava-Cortés
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Crime Patterns and Interventions #Crime, Deviance, and Social Control #Cybercrime and Law Enforcement Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/10439463.2025.2567289
openalex publication_date 2025/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
As digitalisation becomes ubiquitous, urban residents increasingly use digital media to monitor suspicious behaviour, denounce alleged perpetrators, and enforce social order. This paper examines how residents of Mexico City’s high-income neighbourhoods employ social media platforms to practise zero-tolerance policing in coordination with local police. Drawing on ethnographic data, it compares the neighbourhood policing strategies of two cyber-activist groups and explains the conditions under which digitalisation enable resident-police cooperation in the penalisation of disorderly conduct. The findings reveal that social media platforms empower upper-class residents to engage in digital vigilantism, but only a particular, highly privileged group manages to systematically penalise suspected lawbreakers with the support of local law enforcement institutions. The paper underscores how the digitalisation of urban policing amplifies pre-existing economic and political inequalities and reinforces the uneven geographies of policing in Latin American cities.