ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the emergence of private policing in residential communities in the United Kingdom. While private security services have been a recurrent feature of the commercial sector in recent years (Johnston, 1992; Jones and Newbum, 1998), the extension of private policing into residential areas is a more contemporary trend which has yet to be fully explored by researchers. A patchwork of neighbourhood security patrols operated by a diverse range of commercial companies is appearing throughout the U.K., effecting a radical departure from the traditionally public status of policing and law enforcement (Loader, 1997; Sheptycki, 1997). In the light of this, Wilkie et al (1995) suggest that we are in need of an ‘urgent review’ of the increasing drive toward privatisation of policing and the extent to which it represents ‘a fundamental modification of the character, policy and practice of public policing’.
