Why did states conduct anti-crime campaigns in Southeast Asia? I study the national and local actors that carried out the violence; similarities in their conduct of these campaigns; and, public response. Anti-crime campaigns produce high levels of violence, with thousands of extrajudicial killings over a short span of time. In Indonesia, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 killings occurred in Jakarta and other major cities in an anti-crime operation later known as “Petrus” from 1983 to 1984. In 2003 in Thailand, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra pursued a popular anti-drug crime campaign that resulted in an about 2,800 fatalities in three months. Rodrigo Duterte had been elected Philippine president on a promise of bloodshed in a “war on drugs” that killed between 6,200 to 30,000 alleged drug criminals from 2016 to 2022. Routine police brutality only partly explains why state security forces have entrenched values and practices that facilitate extralegal violence. Crucially, however, this does not explain sharp escalations through focused campaigns. There are few conceptual tools and empirical cases to explain states’ anti-crime campaigns of mass killing. What is puzzling is that such illiberal practices occur in democracies and authoritarian regimes alike. Using archival news and other sources, this study seeks to launch a novel inquiry into these Southeast Asian cases of routine state violence that can escalate into popular, focused anti-crime campaigns targeted against individuals and groups considered less than citizen, even less than human.