Distinguished social scientist Daniel Nagin, the Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, was nominated as a Max Planck Law Fellow in 2021 by Professors Christoph Engel and Jean-Louis van Gelder, Directors at the Max Planck Institutes in Bonn and Freiburg. Since then, he has been leading research into the decision-making processes behind reactive and preventive guardianship.
Reactive guardianship occurs when individuals or small groups respond to ongoing criminal incidents with the intent to disrupt them. In contrast, preventive guardianship involves actions taken by community members to deter crimes before they occur, thereby maintaining social control without direct intervention from law enforcement. Professor Nagin writes, ‘Ideally, crime and disorder are not prosecuted; they are pre-empted’.
His collaboration with Professors Engel and van Gelder has been instrumental in advancing this research. Together, they form a Max Planck Law Fellow Group. Professor Nagin expressed his gratitude for the generous support from Max Planck Law, which has enabled them to take on a postdoctoral researcher who will focus on developing and testing crime reduction interventions in public spaces using virtual reality. While a degree of remote collaboration has been a pragmatic necessity, regular in-person visits to the Max Planck Institutes in Bonn and Freiburg remain crucial to the success of their work.
There are publications already resulting from this research. His article, ‘Collective Guardianship, Reactive and Proactive‘, co-authored with MPI-Freiburg colleagues Shaina Herman and Timothy Barnum, was published in Crime and Justice in 2023. This work explores the psychological and social factors that influence individuals’ decisions to serve as guardians, offering new perspectives on informal social control. Another article, titled ‘Informal Social Control: A Randomized Experiment’, co-authored with Christoph Engel, is currently under review and will further expand on these themes through a randomized experiment examining the micro-level interactions that deter potential offenders.
Additionally, a forthcoming article titled ‘Reactive Guardianship: Who Intervenes? How? And Why?’ to be published in Criminology, co-authored with Barnum, Herman, and van Gelder as well as Manuel Eisner and Denis Ribeuad, explores how young adults decide to intervene in a sexual harassment situation. This study reveals that prosocial motivations and emotional reactions are balanced against the perception of danger in their decision-making process.
When asked about the importance of this research, Professor Nagin replied, ‘At the risk of sounding immodest, I think it’s an important line of research to ask the question, what role do we as private citizens have and can play in preventing crime or disrupting it?’ He agrees that by exploring the dynamics of reactive and preventive guardianship, the work not only enhances our understanding of community-based crime prevention but also provides valuable insights that could impact future policy and intervention strategies.