Image Source: My Local Bobby via Facebook
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What would privatisation of policing mean?
At the moment, the police are a publicly funded and administrated sworn law enforcement service.
Privatisation of the police would result in either part, or all, of policing services being provided or financed by private companies. There are different ways this could happen (addressed later) and it doesn’t necessarily mean the police would need to be run for-profit or no longer receive public funding at all.
There are no plans – covert or overt – for policing (as in the territorial police forces) to be privatised by the UK Government as far as I know. However, private companies already have a level of involvement in the criminal justice system and law enforcement.
Parc Prison in Bridgend is managed by G4S. G4S and GeoAmey also provide secure prisoner escorts, while court enforcement officers (aka. bailiffs) and civil enforcement officers are often private contractors. Forensic science services have also been privatised and specialist criminal investigative work (such as data recovery) is often contracted out to private IT companies.
Private Policing: Case Studies
This is the best example of a privately-financed police force in the UK. BTP is funded by train operating companies (mainly private, some public) and receives no funding from the UK Government – though it may charge to police major events. BTP officers have the same sworn powers as other uniformed police officers and although their jurisdiction is usually restricted to the rail and light rail estate, they can use their police powers outside of this.
Established by former Metropolitan Police officers, My Local Bobby performs a mix of private security and community policing in parts of Westminster. They also have the capability via their parent company to undertake private investigations. It’s a subscription-based service; exact fees are unavailable but are said to be anything between £50-£200-per-month.
Officers can be tracked online and customers usually have a named “bobby” as a point of contact. To get around their lack of formal police powers, they perform citizens arrests using handcuffs. The Mayor of London has said that they didn’t want this to be confused with “real policing”, but the Metropolitan Police would work with them to detect and prevent crime.
Due to high crime rates, South Africa has one of the largest private security markets in the world. In 2020, it was estimated there were more than 9,000 private security companies and more than 450,000 private security officers.
While in Wales we might think of private security firms often guarding properties to their greatest extent, in South Africa some of the largest firms offer services normally restricted to the police, including criminal investigations and criminal intelligence gathering.
Leaked information revealed that a crowdsourced crime reporting app called Citizen was planning to enter into a partnership with a subscription-based private security firm, Los Angeles Professional Security. This would have enabled app users to request LAPS staff attend incidents – presumably faster than the police would.
Privatised Policing: Arguments For & Against
Payment by results; specialisation and competition – At the moment, the police may only provide a token one-size-fits-all response to certain crimes. Under some scenarios of police privatisation, you could see different providers actively looking to take on some cases (and turn a profit), therefore providing a more customer-focused service in doing so.
As mentioned, some elements of the criminal justice system are partially or wholly privatised now (with mixed results). So you could see contractors specialising in different areas of policing and investigations coming together to form a single network. Being entirely focused on one particular specialism could, stress could (not necessarily would), provide an improved service in some areas if the consultant/contractors have the relevant experience and can turn around cases much faster than the police would now.
Encourages innovation – Part or wholly privatised police services can make decisions without being worried about optics or political accountability, which means taking risks. Some of those risks could pay off in terms of dealing with crime, with the contractors taking risks that pay off standing to make more money and generate more business.
There’s clear potential in areas such as the use of artificial intelligence, “big data”, and virtual patrols – some of which may not be the exclusive reserve for private security, but are increasingly looked at by public police forces too (not always in a good way).
Better targeting of resources – A privatised police force may not necessarily take over all police duties. Their role could be strictly confined to lower-level, routine and community policing (such as routine street patrols and responding to 999 calls), effectively becoming private security with the powers of a police officer. This in turn would free up existing police officers and resources elsewhere.
Public funding for the police could, therefore, be better focused on high policing resource-intensive criminal investigations, intelligence-gathering and more complicated issues like national security.
Policing has a natural “institutional monopoly” – When the first fire brigades appeared in the 1700s, they were often paid for by insurance companies. This meant that there would sometimes be several different fire insurance brigades “competing” on the same turf. The reason why the number of fire brigades fell is that it’s naturally more efficient for there to be just one provider of an essential, time-sensitive public service in a given area instead of many competing ones.
A similar principle applies to the police. The barrier to entry to provide the complete range of policing services (not just the “bobbies on the beat” stuff or more advanced technical support) is so high than an effective service can usually only be provided by a single organisation. Privatisation without competition is largely pointless.
While innovation may be seen as the sole domain of the private sector, there’s nothing stopping the current police forces from innovating now; they just have to keep the optics and political considerations in mind – South Wales Police’s controversial facial recognition technology, for example.
Privatising the police and making police officers private employees would almost certainly guarantee them the right to strike (police officers are currently barred from certain industrial actions) and probably result in changes to police pension schemes, which could prove very unpopular.
A two-tier policing system would emerge with a better service for the rich – Pulling back, but not eliminating, public involvement in policing would probably lead to the creation of a two-tier system.
There would be a poorly resourced publicly-funded “police system of last resort” for the majority of the population (that would always be at risk of being cut back completely) and a far superior customer-orientated private service for those who could afford to pay for it.
Regardless of what you might think of the police’s current level of service, at least at this moment in time the police are supposed to treat everyone equally (even if they don’t in practice). It’s similar to debates over private involvement in the NHS, where you’re supposed to be treated based on clinical need, not your ability to pay.
Now imagine an investigation into a mugging of an elderly person, child exploitation ring or murder being indefinitely delayed or rejected simply because the victims and survivors can’t afford it. There could be a “public interest of justice fund” set aside to pay for cases like those – much in the same way as legal aid – but it’s surely worse than the system we have now? We would all be reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet – again.
The OCP Argument: Corporate abuse of police/investigatory powers – The police are granted the legal right to use force by the state against its citizens based on policing by consent. What would happen if you gave that power to the likes of G4S, Chubb or Serco?
Throughout history, governments have proven to be more than willing to look the other way on outright bent business practices if the banks are happy and they can keep taxes down.
Private police providers/contractors in a deregulated system (rather than a contract/private-public partnership based system – more on this later) would also have a vested interest in keeping crime levels relatively high to maintain revenues.
The opposite could happen too and contractors may only get paid if crime levels are kept down, in which case you would see far more crackdowns, fit-ups and innocent people being caught up in that as a result in order to cook the books.
What Are The Alternatives?
Normally, this is where I would list alternatives to privatising the police.
As it’s a fundamental principle of how the police are run, there aren’t many alternatives to privatisation other than the publicly-funded uniform service we have now alongside various forms of private security. So privatisation is the alternative.
How Could Wales Privatise Policing?
Beyond the need for there to be political support for the idea – and support amongst the police (there would be big questions over police pensions, for example) – it would certainly require a new Policing Act to set the ground rules for how it would work and it would need to be Constitutional. Somehow.
Let’s assume those new ground rules included (amongst other things):
- All police officers/anyone with arrest powers would have to have completed an accredited course, with policing becoming a fully regulated/chartered profession with a professional register. Private police service providers wouldn’t just be able to hire anyone and stick them in a uniform.
- Procedures in the Police & Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act 1984 would still apply to private police service providers unless updated.
- If there are separate private policing services serving alongside public/sworn police officers, the private providers may have to wear distinctive uniforms and could be barred from carrying out special operations (i.e. armed response).
- Fees for private police services (if applicable) would be regulated and there could be a requirement for police service providers to be not-for-profit, or profit-capped.
- All police services would still be subject to independent inspection and independent investigation of complaints.
The next question is what model would be used.
This is perhaps the only practical means of having private management of the police and that’s….the taxpayer paying for it anyway. Local or national governments would award multi-year contracts (probably up to 20 years) to private providers to manage and run police services in a given area for a fixed price or a commission of some kind. A policing precept would still be raised, but if there are backroom savings it could be cut slightly.
Similarly to how fire brigades used to be managed and financed, insurance companies would provide police services as part of their policies. Householders and businesses would no longer have to pay a precept towards policing and it would be their choice as to whether they reinvest that in a policing insurance policy. People would then be able to choose based on what they can afford and the quality of service.
Under this model, policing would be provided either on a fee basis or subscription, though these charges would be regulated by the government (similarly to how some NHS and social care fees are regulated). While this “market” would probably be dominated by the big insurers and security companies, it could potentially open the door to smaller local policing services.
What if there were no rules?
See also: “Libertarian Police Department.”
The other possible delivery model is an anarcho-capitalist free-for-all – privatisation and deregulation. Maybe there would still be rules in place around police procedure; maybe not.
In essence, the private providers would be able to charge whatever they could get away with and effectively do whatever they want within the bounds of the constitution (rather than the law) or contract with the customer at the point of use.
I’d buy that for a dollar.
No AI tools were used to draft this post.
