Public and Private Policing: Privatization of Police Services, a Global Phenomenon

Public and Private Policing The growing privatization of police services is a global phenomenon. It was first widely noted in the United States in a 1972 Rand Corporation study commissioned by the National Institute of Justice. Several years later, Stenning and Shearing observed that a “quiet revolution” toward private policing had occurred in Canada. South documented a similar trend in both western and eastern European countries. And an update of the original Rand assessment in 1985 concluded that private security outspent public law enforcement by 73 percent and employed two and a half times as many people. Public and private policing have many similarities, as well as differences and the distinction between public and private police are often blurred. Private policing, while emerging as a new industry, is not a new phenomenon and predates the existence of public police as witnessed today (Wilson 1994, p. 285). There are at least three reasons for the dramatic increase. First, in both post-industrial and developing nations, there has been an increase in what Stenning and Shearing call “mass private property”: shopping malls and gated communities. These spaces have traditionally fallen outside of the domain of public police, although this is now changing. Second, the fear of crime among those with property has grown faster than government’s willingness to spend more money on police protection. In many countries, this fear of crime among the propertied classes was intensified by the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule. Third, private police forces have often placed a higher priority on visible patrol than public police, hoping to deter crime through their presence. As early as 1971 Scott and McPherson worried that private policing might infringe upon civil liberties with impunity. Formal and familiar mechanisms exist around the world to hold public police accountable for their actions, but accountability mechanisms for private police are less

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