Could Britain learn from Japan's ‘vigilante' groups?

Spectator

08-08-2025

A uniformed group of volunteers is planning to patrol the mean streets of Bournemouth in response to a recent surge in crime in the once sleepy south coast retirement haven. More than 200 have signed up so far, including ex-forces personnel. They will be equipped with radios, stab vests, and body cameras and have promised to be 'non political and inclusive'. Given the widespread tensions surrounding migrant hotels (there are three in Bournemouth) this could be the start of a national trend, prompting the obvious question – do such groups work?
The clear point of reference is the USA and the Guardian Angels, the crime prevention force wearing red berets that originated in New York in 1979. The Angels began by riding the notorious New York subway and especially line four (known as the 'Mugger's Express)'. They have since expanded their activities considerably and are currently focusing on the city's horrendous homelessness problem and the frequent 'medical emergencies' it produces.
As to whether the Guardian Angels have been a success, the jury appears to be out. They have spread to multiple US cities, but there is little data to support a drop in crime directly related to their activities. In New York, currently under the leadership of Mayor Eric Adams murder and shootings are down but everything else is sharply up and law and order remains a key issue (even left-wing progressive Zohran Mamdani doesn't want to decrease the NYPD headcount).
But it is hard to evaluate the Guardian Angels as they have often been overwhelmed by events, such as the homelessness epidemic, the huge influx of immigrants and wildly shifting state policies, most dramatically mayor Bill De Blasio's commitement to cut $1 billion from the police budget after the death of George Floyd and the rise of BLM.
A less obvious comparison is with Japan, a country with an enviably low crime rate. Recent data is lacking but in 2014 Japan had an estimated three million 'Bouhan' (crime prevention) volunteers. They patrol in groups of five to ten twice daily particularly at the beginning and end of the school day. They don't engage. On the ultra-rare occasion when they spot something amiss, they blow their whistles and alert the authorities.
The Japanese groups have a faintly comical side. They are generally old, if not elderly, and shuffle around in home-made uniforms with outsized high viz jackets looking like they would struggle to pacify an errant toddler never mind a mugger. But to dismiss the patrols as a Dad's (and Mum's) army of busy bodies would be to do them a disservice and play into the well-worn myth of the Japanese as naturally peaceable and law-abiding.
Japan may be a relatively safe country now but it wasn't always so. Tokyo within the living memory of many of the veteran security patrollers was a filthy crime-ridden sewer, unsafe for women at night, and where the yakuza held considerable sway. The great clean up and makeover that precipitated the 1964 Olympics and subsequent economic recovery helped transform Japan but there was always more crime than easily impressed onlookers imagined.
The citizen's security patrols exploded in popularity in the 1990s as a response to an alarming uptick in crime, the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway of 1995, and the Kobe earthquake of the same year (when 6,500 people lost their lives). Reported crime reached a peak of 2.85 million in 2002, roughly double the figure of 20 years before. The Kobe earthquake also seems to have induced a sense that community relations needed to be reinforced – that the authorities could not be relied on for everything.
By 2015 reported crimes had fallen to 1.2 million. There were various reasons for this including the virtual outlawing of the Yakuza, but the surge in participation in citizen security patrols cannot be discounted. At their peak (according to the Ministry of Justice) one in 38 Japanese citizens was a member, a significant societal safeguard.
Apart from numbers, Japan's security patrols have two things that may be lacking in New York, or Bournemouth. One is the unequivocal backing of the Japanese people. The idea of antifa or migrant's rights groups denouncing their activities (as the Bournemouth group has already experienced) is unthinkable here (and this is not because there are no problems with new arrivals, as the recent murder of a woman in Saga by a Vietnamese immigrant and the rise of the Reform-ish Sanseito party shows).
They also appear to have the backing of the state ('Plus Bouhan' a community policing initiative has been supported by the government). The groups' uniforms, tactics and demeanour mirror the police, with whom they maintain good relations. The fact that officers are never far away, due to the extensive Koban (police box) system is crucial. Wrong doers may not fear the geriatric pavement pounders but they do fear the real version, who can be summoned in minutes.
The key point may be that the Japanese patrols feel like an extension of the police and in a way, a tribute. Elsewhere, attempts at citizen-led security have felt like a substitute and a rebuke of a failed state.