Within the law, without the state, and for a profit: The rise of private policing

Today private police play a critical role in providing security and crime control, yet few possess a clear idea of what the private police actually do, or what they are entitled to do. Nor do many grasp the difference in legal treatment between the private and public police.; In the United States, the business of providing policing on a private, for-profit basis now employs more people and accounts for the expenditure of more money than does public policing. Not only are their numbers increasing, but it is growing more difficult to distinguish private from public police. Yet the law regulating the private police presumes that they are completely distinct from the public police, resulting in a separate legal framework for each group. Legal scholars will point out that the distinction turns on the constitutional law doctrine of state action, but application of that doctrine rests on a limited understanding of what private police actually do. Moreover, public agencies are increasingly promoting partnerships between public and private police. This largely uncritical advocacy by federal and local government is especially striking because, until relatively recently, private police were subjected to intense public criticism.; This dissertation shows that private police participate in much of the policing work that their public counterparts do. Although every private police agency may not perform all the tasks that a public police department does, many do, and private police in the aggregate unquestionably perform all of these duties. The characterization of private police as mere "night watchmen" is both dated and inadequate. Exactly what constitutes "policing" and who may legitimately call themselves "police" are now contested issues. I argue further that the regulatory framework governing the police, by giving insufficient consideration to these increasingly unsettled questions, creates legal distinctions at odds with actual police work. Furthermore, the proposition that private police ought to serve as partners with public police in crime prevention must be met with caution, for these partnerships present unresolved questions as to the proper balance of burdens, benefits, and controls that are distributed between the public and private sectors.