When Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes, the great detective didn’t work alone.
He had the Baker Street Irregulars; a ragtag group of street kids who scoured the city for information Holmes couldn’t get himself. Long before the term existed, Holmes was practicing what we now call crowdsourcing: harnessing the power of many to solve problems that one person, or even one institution, couldn’t crack alone.
Today, the same principle is transforming the way we solve crimes, close cold cases, and demand accountability.
What is Crowdsourcing?
At its core, crowdsourcing is the practice of gathering information or solving problems by tapping into the collective intelligence of a group. The term was coined in 2005 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, but the practice itself is ancient, from museums built through donated collections to communities rallying around missing persons cases.
When done right, crowdsourcing follows a clear process:
- A call to action (sometimes with incentives).
- Collecting data.
- Managing and sorting findings.
- Verifying accuracy.
It’s not just cheap or efficient, it’s powerful. Because when many people focus their time, skills, and networks on a single issue, they uncover leads and truths that otherwise stay buried.
Where It’s Already Working
Crowdsourcing has revolutionized science, history, and media:
- History preserved: When a fire destroyed U.S. War Department archives in 1800, the records seemed lost forever. By 2006, volunteers digitized over 45,000 recovered documents, bringing the nation’s past back to life. The Library of Congress has since relied on volunteers to transcribe letters from Abraham Lincoln and suffragist leaders.
- Science expanded: Citizen scientists have helped identify earthquakes more accurately than AI, discovered new planets, and even spotted gravitational lenses that professional astronomers overlooked.
- Media democratized: News outlets now regularly depend on eyewitness video from citizens. Social media has turned bystanders into the first responders of accountability.
If it can change science and history, why not criminal justice?
Crowdsourcing in Criminal Justice
Law enforcement has long depended on the public. The very roots of policing in England relied on crowds; able-bodied men forming posses to track criminals. Juries are essentially crowdsourcing panels tasked with solving the hardest questions of guilt and innocence.
But in the digital age, things are evolving fast.
- TV & Public Alerts: America’s Most Wanted led to the capture of 1,200 fugitives. AMBER Alerts have rescued nearly 1,000 children since 2006.
- Community Programs: Crimestoppers pays anonymous tipsters, proving that when people feel safe, they talk.
- Social Media Sleuths: After the 2011 Vancouver riots, Facebook photos and videos led to prosecutions that traditional policing might have missed.
This is citizen power at scale.
Closing Cold Cases with Collective Power
Some of the most remarkable breakthroughs come from ordinary people refusing to let cases go cold:
- “Grateful Doe” identified: Reddit users helped connect a decades-old John Doe case to Jason Callahan’s grieving mother.
- The Luka Magnotta case: A global community on Facebook pieced together evidence against a murderer who posted his crimes online.
- Podcasts like The Murder Squad: True crime listeners don’t just consume stories—they upload DNA to genealogy databases and actually help solve cases. One listener even cracked a 40-year-old murder in Colorado.
This isn’t vigilante justice. Done responsibly, citizen detectives follow unwritten rules: verify before publishing, respect victims, avoid naming suspects prematurely, and collaborate when possible.
Why Law Enforcement Resists and Why They Shouldn’t
Some police dismiss crowdsourcing as chaotic or even dangerous. Yes, mistakes can happen, as seen when online forums misidentified a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
But that wasn’t a failure of crowdsourcing itself, it was a failure of guidance and safeguards.
Imagine instead:
- Police-run volunteer networks with training, background checks, and oversight.
- Citizen experts bringing fresh eyes to cases, using skills police may lack—like genetic genealogy or data analysis.
- Technology partnerships between departments and communities, ensuring information flows safely and effectively.
As clearance rates plummet and budgets shrink, refusing crowdsourcing is not just outdated. It’s negligent.
Conclusion: The New Irregulars
Every day, across the world, people are already working together to solve crimes. They are the New Irregulars; ordinary citizens with laptops, podcasts, Reddit threads, or just determination to seek justice.
If Sherlock Holmes were alive today, he wouldn’t be walking the streets of London with a magnifying glass, he’d be logging into Reddit, scrolling through Facebook videos, and opening his inbox to find case notes from volunteers.
The question is not if crowdsourcing belongs in criminal justice. It’s when law enforcement will finally embrace it.
Because in the fight for justice, the crowd isn’t a threat; it’s the future.
References
1 Merritt, R. Characters by Arthur Conan Doyle the baker street irregulars and Billy the page. https://arthurconandoyle.co.uk/character/the-baker-street-irregulars-and-billy-the-page.
2 Parrick, R., & Chapman, B. (2020). Working the crowd for forensic research: A review of contributor motivation and recruitment strategies used in crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for scientific research. Forensic Science International: Synergy, 2, 173–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2020.05.002
3 Nassar, L., & Karray, F. (2019). Overview of the crowdsourcing process. Knowledge & Information Systems, 60(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-018-1235-5
4 Gray, G., & Benning, B. (2019). Crowdsourcing criminology: Social media and citizen policing in missing person cases.SAGE Open, 9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019893700
5 Nassar, L., & Karray, F. (2019). Overview of the crowdsourcing process. Knowledge & Information Systems, 60(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-018-1235-5
6 Williams, C. (2013). Crowdsourcing Research: A methodology for investigating state crime. State Crime Journal, 2(1), 30.
7 Heppler, J. A., & Wolfenstein, G. K. (n.d.). Crowdsourcing digital public history. Organization of American Historians. https://tah.oah.org/content/crowdsourcing-digital-public-history/.
8 Krasnoff, B. (2019, August 14). Write history for the Library of Congress’ crowdsourcing project. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/14/20804361/historical-documents-library-of-congress-by-the-people-crowdsourcing-project-transcription.
9 Tang, V., Rösler, B., Nelson, J., Thompson, J., Lee, S. V. D., Chao, K., & Paulsen, M. (2020). Citizen scientists help detect and classify dynamically triggered seismic activity in Alaska. Frontiers in Earth Science, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.00321
10 Hadhazy, A. (2016, January 15). Crowdsourcing the universe: How citizen scientists are driving discovery (kavli roundtable). Space.com. https://www.space.com/31626-crowdsourced-astronomy-finding-faint-galaxies-in-deep-space.html.
11 Reddy, F. (2020, January 6). TESS discovers its 1st planet orbiting 2 stars. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-s-tess-mission-uncovers-its-1st-world-with-two-stars.
12 Citizen science and crowdsourcing. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://www.noaa.gov/office-education/citizen-science-crowdsourcing.
13 Schmalleger, F. (2019). Criminal justice today: an introductory text for the twenty-first century (15th ed.). Pearson.
14 Jensen, B. (2019). Chase darkness with me: How one true-crime writer started solving murders. Sourcebooks, Inc.
15 Cochran, A. (2013, May 07). “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh on cancellation: Show needs to be on TV. Retrieved October 13, 2020, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americas-most-wanted-host-john-walsh-on-cancellation-show-needs-to-be-on-tv/
16 McCrary, R., & Kent, A. M. (2020, October 15). Shiawassee sheriff teams up with ‘To Catch a Predator’ host in child sex sting. WNEM Saginaw. https://www.wnem.com/news/shiawassee-sheriff-teams-up-with-to-catch-a-predator-host-in-child-sex-sting/article_ff62d500-0f26-11eb-88ec-bb9b20cdec3b.html.
17 Marlow, A., & Miller, R. (2000). The value of crimestoppers. Police Journal, 73(2),
18 Office of Justice Programs. (2020). Statistics – AMBER Alert. https://amberalert.ojp.gov/statistics.
19 Davis, R. C., Jensen, C. J., 3rd, Burgette, L., & Burnett, K. (2014). Working smarter on cold cases: identifying factors associated with successful cold case investigations. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 59(2), 375–382. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.12384
20 Gascon, G., & Foglesong, T. (2010, December). Making policing more affordable: Managing costs and measuring value in policing. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/231096.pdf
21 LaPorte, G., Waltke, H., Heurich, C., & Chase, R. J. (2018, April). National Institute of Justice fiscal year 2017 funding for DNA analysis, capacity enhancement, and other forensic activities. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/251445.pdf
22 Rogers, M. (2015, Dec 11). “‘Grateful Doe’ is identified 20 years after road trip death.” New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/us/grateful-doe-is-identified-20-years-after-road-trip-death.html
23 Kelly, M. (Writer), & Karp, M. (Director). (2014, November 30). Hunting Luka Magnotta (Season 38, Episode 12) [Tv series episode]. In J. Williamson (Executive Producer), The Fifth Estate. Canadian Broadcasting Company.
24 Ehrlich, B., & Marks, A. (2020, January 14). True crime podcast leads to arrest in 40-year-old cold case. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/murder-squad-arrest-james-clanton-helene-pruszynski-colorado-murder-937098/.
25 Glaser, R. (2017, November 02). Crime fighting crowd: Can crowdsourcing help solve real-life crimes? Retrieved October 13, 2020, from https://wwmt.com/news/local/crime-fighting-crowd-can-crowdsourcing-help-solve-real-life-crimes
26 Füller, J., Hutter, K., & Kröger, N. (2020). How to prevent crowdsourcing disasters and leverage positive side effects of open innovation. NIM Marketing Intelligence Review, 12(1), 30–35. https://doi.org/10.2478/nimmir-2020-0005
🖤 Love what we do? Support Clutch.
