Online Citizen Networks to Monitor and Influence the Administration of Justice William E. Boyd

1. Online Citizen Networks to Monitor and Influence the Administration of Justice William E. Boyd James E. Rogers College of Law University of Arizona Tucson, AZ LEFIS Program on Digitalization and the Administration of Justice, on August 30 to September 1, Zaragoza, Spain.

2. Brief Summary Community involvement is an essential ingredient of effective law enforcement. Efforts to tap into citizen input exhibit a traditional, top down structure that does not allow for the level of citizen participation that is both possible and desirable.

3. An explosion of online grassroots political activity, facilitated by groups such as MoveOn.org, has the potential for transforming the political process in the United States and producing an emergent participatory democracy.

4. The bottom up Internet-based citizen involvement that is powering positive change in the political sphere could happen in the law enforcement setting and lead to the improvement of the administration of justice.

5. 5 Existing Community Action Projects that Impact the Administration of Justice Beginning in the 1990’s there have been a number of projects aimed at increasing the participation of citizens in all aspects of the administration of justice, have sprung up.

6. 6 Among the best known of these efforts is the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy undertaken in the mid-1990s by the Chicago Police Department (CPD).

7. 7 These projects recognize that residents often have superior knowledge and different priorities, even where they and the police are equally well informed and that police/community partnerships can bring citizens closer to officers and enable them to monitor police activities and better hold police accountable.

8. 8 For much of the early history of the United States organized police forces were viewed with suspicion and widespread citizen involvement was the norm.

9. 9 Police were not exclusively concerned with detecting and punishing criminals but rather were involved in a wide variety of social services, including providing food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless. To this extent, police were part of the communities they served.

10. 10 As law enforcement became more professional the law enforcers became more remote from their communities and an unhealthy “us versus them” mentality took hold.

11. 11 The appropriate response to these deficiencies is to reform the institutional framework to reintroduce a greater degree of citizen and community involvement.

12. 12 However, effective reform requires a level and diversity of citizen participation that makes citizens actual, if not equal, partners in the administration of justice. The attempts at reform through community involvement to date have failed to achieve that degree of citizen participation.

13. 13 In my judgment the necessary degree of citizen involvement is possible. The online grassroots activity that has emerged as a potential remedy to the deficiencies of the political system supports my conclusion.

14. 14 Citizen Involvement in the Political System I have argued elsewhere that a truly participatory democracy not only is necessary but is possible in complex, large-scale systems.

15. 15 Internet-based communications permits citizen participation on a previously unimagined level. Unique organizations that skillfully employ the technology have turned waves of grassroots online political activity into a force capable of transforming the democratic process. MoveOn.org is the paradigm of such organizations.

16. 16 The “FCC Uprising” illustrates my point. In June of 2003, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed rules changes that would have dramatically increased the concentration of ownership and control of the media. There was a huge public outcry.

17. 17 When it became clear that the FCC majority intended to make the changes despite growing public opposition to them, the MoveOn.org leadership took the matter to its membership.

18. 18 MoveOn’s electronic messages urged recipients to act immediately to challenge the FCC action by signing petitions, sending e-mail, letters and faxes, and making phone calls to the members of Congress.

19. 19 The outcome of this unprecedented online, MoveOn.org orchestrated, citizen uprising was that the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to require the FCC to roll back the changes.

20. 20 The FCC Uprising and its outcome demonstrates that citizens do care and wish to participate provided only that they are given the means to do so.

21. 21 Internet-based communications networks and MoveOn.org gave them this ability. MoveOn.org tapped into the desire of citizens to participate and empowered them individually and collectively to do so.

22. 22 What Is MoveOn.org? Moveon.org began in 1998 as an effort to force a Republican-dominated Congress to censure President Clinton and move on to the more pressing business of the country.

23. 23 It grew within weeks from a group of less than 100 family members and friends to include hundreds of thousands of citizens who were enabled to electronically “sign” a petition that very simply asked Congress to censure and move on.

24. 24 What Makes MoveOn.org An Effective Facilitator or Enabling Organization? Its membership structure is unique. MoveOn supporters become “members” simply by subscribing to MoveOn e-mail action alerts and taking requested action as they may deem fit.

25. 25 MoveOn membership is fluid in the sense that individuals may support a MoveOn campaign or not as they so choose and a vote of the “membership” is not necessary to collective action. Not all “members” are actively engaged in all campaigns and instead individuals will be more or less actively engaged as their schedules and the intensity of their feelings may dictate.

26. 26 In its essence, MoveOn.org is a community of “Five-Minute Activists” who share certain basic beliefs and who have come to believe their opinions matter and their actions can make a difference.

27. 27 To produce a safe and secure environment within which views – often critical of the government – can be expressed openly and without fear of recrimination, MoveOn zealously protects its supporters’ privacy.

28. 28 Preserving members’ privacy also helps protect participants from the growing scourge of unsolicited commercial and political e-mail or “spam” that can undermine the vitality of a community that depends so heavily for its existence on Internet-based communications.

29. 29 Moveon.org is largely financed by small donations from its two million plus domestic and foreign supporters and this financial structure gives MoveOn.org independence from negative forces in the political system so often powered by big money.

30. 30 MoveOn.org’s ability to finance its operations from small donations demonstrates that vast numbers of citizens will open their pocket books to support causes they care about and believe they can further.

31. 31 MoveOn.org is a virtual organization. There is no specific physical location or headquarters for MoveOn.org. The leaders reside in different cities across the country and work out of virtual offices while rank and file Moveon workers also are connected by the Internet.

32. 32 For most of its existence, there have been only six or seven leaders at the top level of Moveon. Moveon leaders are listeners and servers.

33. 33 Their role is frame issues in such a way as to give members the information they need and to capture their preferences for speedy and convenient action.

34. 34 The result is that agendas are significantly member driven rather than imposed from the top down.

35. 35 How MoveOn.org Does What It Does The bottom up, member-driven agenda setting that MoveOn aspires to tests the limits of technology.

36. 36 Moveon.org uses a bubble-up issue forum, called ActionForum, through which members identify the issues they feel are most important and urgent. MoveOn also uses a set of comprehensive online communication tools called GetActive™.

37. 37 MoveOn’s successes have required that the community members trust the leadership and each other. Most of those who sign on have neither the time nor the inclination to verify the claims upon which the pleas for action are based.

38. 38 Mutual trust plays an important role in MoveOn’s success. Community members lend their names (and often give their money) to a campaign because they have confidence in the reliability of what they are told and the wisdom of the actions they are asked to take.

39. 39 It is safe to assume that if a MoveOn campaign were ever shown to be based on unreliable information or MoveOn community members were ever induced to take inappropriate action then MoveOn.org would cease to be as effective as it has been.

40. 40 Transparency also has been essential. When important decisions are made behind closed doors and people are kept from knowing the facts and excluded from the decision-making process systems break down.

41. 41 MoveOn’s agenda, the reasons for its actions or failure to act, and many of the specifics of its day-to-day activities are open and readily accessible.

42. 42 MoveOn.org also has effectively employed numerous offline tactics, including paid political advertisements in newspapers and on television.

43. 43 It has regularly encouraged and promoted citizen gatherings at which participants can put faces to screen names and have their beliefs that they individually and collectively can make a difference reinforced.

44. 44 The offline gatherings have been orchestrated by technology-based methodology such as Meetup.com. “Meetup” is an online service that facilitates individuals and groups getting together offline.

45. 45 The Meetup technology has been significantly augmented by a “Get Local” tool that allows people to find the most convenient meeting places simply by entering a zip code online.

46. 46 MoveOn.org As A Prototype Its unique membership and leadership structure and its bottom up agenda formulation are what has allowed MoveOn to tap into citizens’ desires to engage. MoveOn-like groups could spring into existence in every setting where expanded citizen participation is needed.

47. 47 These groups must emulate the MoveOn model of a flat rather than hierarchical administrative structure according to which agendas emerge more from the bottom up rather than being driven from the top down.

48. 48 Members and leaders must work together to develop strategies that exploit the power of the Internet to bring to bear the bottom up power of large numbers of citizens.

49. 49 Leaders must be listeners. Benjamin Barber notes that  "it is far easier for representatives to speak for us than to listen for us" (or to us) and "listening is a mutualistic art that by its very practice enhances equality."

50. 50 If leaders lapse into traditional behaviors, stop listening, or otherwise lose touch with community members the groups will cease to get the attention and support necessary to its existence.