Modern Private Security: Its Growth and Implications

Abstract

On the North American continent, in Europe and elsewhere, the dramatic growth in private security in the past several decades has reshaped the structure and function of modern policing. The development of private security has been facilitated by fundamental shifts in the nature of property relations. These changes have encouraged the development of a preventative mode of policing consistent with the principles and hopes of nineteenth-century police reformers, but they also suggest that we are moving in the direction of a new disciplinary society and raise fundamental questions with respect to sovereignty, justice, and individual liberty now almost entirely unrecognized. In particular, the legal institutions regarding private property operate to enhance the potential threat to individual liberty posed by the development of modern private security.