My googling came up dry, but here’s what I learned:
Search for “Citizen’s Arrest” at the Bureau of Justice statistics, and you get nothing. No data, no publications. Huh.
Interesting law article here. Author argues that citizen’s arrests should be curbed except for 1) Shopkeeper’s privilege, 2) Police outside of their jurisdiction 3) Private Police forces (eg mall cops), and 4) Special Conservators of the Peace (i.e. you can make a citizen’s arrest with permission and regulation from the state). Author cites no statistics AFAICT, suggesting that there are few sources of statistics.
But there was less scholarly work on citizen’s arrests than I anticipated.
Reliable, up to date, quantitative data on private police is virtually non-existent, making statistical analysis impossible. Little noteworthy research has been conducted on this topic in the past decade.
Combining citations, if there’s little data on private policing, there is probably even less on citizen’s arrests.
Couldn’t/shouldn’t that result in an arrest of the person who initiated a citizens arrest, for kidnapping or false imprisonment? As I understand it, if the arrestee didn’t commit a crime, the arrester loses all protection of citizens arresting powers.
But the officer at the scene could make the judgement “No crime here”.
If the arrester was taken to court, it would be up to the state and the police to prove that no (original) crime had been committed. Lack of (original) conviction leaves the arrester open to arrest and conviction (and civil penalties), but that doesn’t mean that the police should arrest the arrester, or that a prosecutor would think there is reasonable chance of conviction.
IMHO it was the possibility of private civil action rather than the exceedingly remote possibility of criminal conviction that worried the arrester I mentioned in post #3.
Like all cases, this would depend on what happens in court. The person “arrested” will possibly file a complaint, the prosecutor may or may not prosecute for unlawful detainment. Or the detainee may sue in civil court. Then the court has to decide if the arresting citizen is guilty or liable. I suppose one of the criteria is whether they honestly believed with certainty that a crime had been committed. Obviously, the police officer arriving on scene cannot make the final judgement that a crime was not committed, it’s just one more data point for judge or jury to deliberate on. Plus, the court may consider the effect of conviction vs. damage done; why convict someone of a crime that could carry 20 years in prison for holding someone for 20 minutes waiting for the police? (kind of like - is it assault if I poke your shoulder with my finger?)
But… this is why it’s very important for the person performing the arrest to have actually witnessed the crime. That is a pretty solid defense, that the person witnessed what any reasonable person would call an obvious crime.
The other issue is immediacy. If the person has been running around town for several hours, there may be no immediate need to hold him for police for a petty crime (not to mention the risk of mistaken identity). In this case, they saw the offender several hours later, and “arrested” him fairly forcibly: