Abstract: In 1890, the Church of the Latter Day Saints officially banned the practice of plural marriage, thus bringing Mormons into conformity with the laws of the United States and paving the way for Utah’s statehood. This, however, was not the end of the political controversy over polygamy. Some Mormons persisted with the practice, and the stereotype that all Mormons were polygamous also persisted. This paper examines how and why the Mormons developed a norm of vigorous, public in-group policing to deal with these problems. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Church had sent mixed signals about the continuation of plural marriage, but from the 1920s onwards church officials took a very hard-line anti-polygamous stance and actively collaborated with state governments in trying to crush the practice. This study has broader applicability to embattled minorities in general—why these groups at some times protect “wayward” group members from hostile outsiders and at other times participate in policing efforts against these group members to enhance the standing of the group as a whole. This dynamic is essential to the emergence of norms of inter-group trust.

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