Replication Data for: Cycles of Silence: Police-citizen Cooperation in Communities with Criminal Groups

Criminal groups often prevent citizens from sharing information with the police, which undermines the state’s ability to provide justice for victims of violence. This article presents "cycles of silence" theory, positing that criminal groups prevent police-citizen cooperation by making community norms favoring cooperation appear weaker than they are to citizens. The theory is tested with a survey of 1,025 shopkeepers--along with interviews and observation--in the markets of Lagos, Nigeria where "area boy" crews engage in violence and extortion. The crews make cooperation norms appear artificially weak, and as a result, witnesses are willing to share significantly less information about area boy violence than they would in the absence of this norm suppression. A virtual reality vignette embedded into the survey shows that rendering a tip line anonymous and creating awareness of others cooperating can increase witness information-sharing with the police.