Commercialization of Policing and Security

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts related to the commercialization of policing, privatization, and security.

Commercialization of policing

Policing for profit, involving private companies like G4S.

Adaptation

An adaptive strategy views crime as a risk to be managed rather than an enemy to be defeated.

Responsibilization

The deliberate redistribution of responsibility for crime control to actors outside of the criminal justice system.

Commercial Security Industry

Includes security guarding (contract and in-house), private investigators, security equipment, and private military services.

Mass private property

Private shopping centres, gated communities, and leisure parks that utilize commercial security.

Instrumental logic

Focus on costs and efficiency in commercialized policing.

Marketization of public policing

Selling policing services and private sponsorship in public policing.

commercialization of justice

New crime control ‘mentalities’: ‘economic’ ways of thinking about crime

what does commercial security industry do?

Crime investigation, order maintenance, public

patrol/reassurance, emergency response, law enforcement,

guarding prisoners, a range of ‘service’ functions

How is policing done?

Risk management and the expansion of new technologies and security hardware

Government policy: privatization of public policing functions

• Prisoner and court escort/guarding, detention officers, parking controls

• Major programmes of ‘out-sourcing’ (eg.Lincolnshire contract with G4S)

• Statutory regulation of commercial security: The Private Security Act 2001

commercialized policing focuses

• compared Instrumental logic (focus on costs and efficiency and ‘loss prevention’)

• Forward-looking, preventive and proactive

• Hidden, consensual and ‘embedded’ forms of policing (emphasis on new surveillance technologies, customer service)

focuses of public policing

• Symbolic/emotive and ‘moral’ focus of traditional public policing

• Reactive/retrospective ‘traditional’ focus on enforcement, detection, punishment

• Overt and demonstrative aspects of public policing

marketization of public polciing

New management approaches/languages

Selling policing services & private sponsorship

‘Proactive’ policing and risk management techniques

Police use of new technologies developed in the

commercial sector (e.g. CCTV, drones, facial recognition

etc)

increased public functions of commercial security

• Commercial provision in public police forces (front office, guarding prisoners, victim statements etc)

• Guarding of government buildings (eg. courts and prisoner escorts)

• Increased deployment in public spaces (town centres, public parks etc)