Definition
Public and private initiatives to respond to disorder and crime.
Introduction
Policing is a very wide, and expanding, concept. While it naturally has a strong connection with “the police” as the entity for the execution of the monopoly over legitimate use of force by the state, policing as a concept goes much further than just the actions of the public police. For example, policing may involve regulatory agencies (see, e.g., Mascini and Van Erp 2014), civilians (see, e.g., Van Steden 2009), and private security firms (see, e.g., South 1988). In this contribution, the concept of policing will be unpacked. In current society, “policing” can no longer be seen as the sole responsibility of any state actor, and so, both the public and the private side of policing are discussed.
High Versus Low Policing
Policing as a concept can be considered contested. First of all, there is a difference between high and low policing that is often not made in our day-to-day use of the concept....
References
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Further Reading
Button, M. (2002). Private policing. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Johnston, L. (1992). The rebirth of private policing. London: Routledge.
van Steden, R. (2007). Privatizing policing: describing and explaining the growth of private security. Den Haag: Boom Juridische uitgevers.
Walby, K., & Lippert, R. (Eds.). (2014). Corporate security in the 21st century: Theory and practice in international perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wood, J., & Shearing, C. (2007). Imagining security. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
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Meerts, C. (2019). Police: Public Versus Private Policing. In: Shapiro, L., Maras, MH. (eds) Encyclopedia of Security and Emergency Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69891-5_86-1
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