Privatization and Capitalist Development: The Case of the Private Police

Abstract

This paper investigates some of the relationships between private policing and the development of capitalist economic systems. We argue that the emergence and transformation of profit-oriented police services must be understood as part of a larger movement toward the extension of capitalist control over the labor process and the rationalization of productive activity. Three distinctive stages in the privatization of policing are discussed–policing as piece-work, policing in the industrial age, and policing under corporate capitalism–with special attention to how these arrangements reveal the priorities and reflect the limitations of capitalist development. The shifting balance between public and private “crime control” is also explored as part of the changing relationship between policing and the political economy of our society.