How Far Can Crime Prevention and Detection Services Be Privatized? What Specific Problems May This Pose for This Part of the Criminal Justice System? (From Privatization of Crime Control, P 45-76, 1990 -- See NCJ-130251)

• NCJ Number: 130253
• Author(s): F Ocqueteau
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 32 pages
• Corporate Author: Council of Europe
• Sale Source: Council of Europe Publications
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: France
• Note: Presented at the 18th Criminological Research Conference, 1988. Collected Studies in Criminological Research, Vol. 27.

Annotation

This paper considers some of the problems posed by the debate over the partial or total privatization of certain prerogatives of social control including police-controlled prevention and detection.

Abstract

The discussion begins with an overview of three questions relating to the general problem of privatization: what is meant by public, whether the social control of crime prevention and detection rightly belongs to the public sphere, and why the question of penal privatization has become so important. The paper then moves to an analysis of issues of privatization through preventive action organized by civil society and through the expanding influence of the private security sector. New combinations of private and public regulations in both the United States and Europe have blurred the boundaries between the two types of intervention. As a result, traditional criminal law is being replaced to some extent by other means of safeguarding individual interests. 78 references