Define and analyze the relationship between traditional policing and the role of private security in America and the world today

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Policing is being transformed and restructured in the modern world in ways that were unanticipated only a few decades ago. Much of the change is due to the development of private protective services as an important adjunct to public law enforcement activities in the United States and throughout much of the rest of the world. A NIJ report says that "the key to understanding the transformation is that policing, meaning the activity of making societies safe, is no longer carried out exclusively by governments" and that the distinction between private and public police has begun to blur. According to the NIJ, "gradually, almost imperceptibly, policing has been ‘multilateralized,'" meaning that "a host of nongovernmental agencies have undertaken to provide security services." As a result, the NIJ report says, "policing has entered a new era, an era characterized by a transformation in the governance of security." The report concludes the following:
• In most countries, certainly in the democratic world, private police outnumber public police.
• In these same countries, people spend more time in theirdaily lives in places where visible crime prevention and control are provided by nongovernmental groups rather than by governmental police agencies.