Book review: Privatising Justice: The Security Industry, War and Crime Control, by Wendy Fitzgibbon and John Lea
| Author | Harriet Burgess BL |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1748895820987319 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2021, Vol. 21(4) 585 –589
© The Author(s) 2021
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Book reviews
Wendy Fitzgibbon and John Lea, Privatising Justice: The Security Industry, War and Crime Control,
Pluto Press: London, 2020; 224 pp.: 9780745399256, £75.00 (hbk), 9780745399232, £22.99
(pbk)
Reviewed by: Harriet Burgess BL, LL.B (Dub), MSc (Oxon)
DOI: 10.1177/1748895820987319
This book successfully charts the waxing and waning of privatised and public justice
across the centuries. It highlights that private companies previously enjoyed legitimacy
in activities that the state has since monopolised.
The authors argue that colonial conquest was an integral part of Britain’s capitalist
expansion, which relied on foreign mercenaries, who made up 54% of the British mili-
tary forces in 1701. The (British) East India Company was outsourced the power to
establish fortifications, organise courts, write laws and issue punishment (Stern, 2012
quoted in Fitzgibbon and Lea, 2020: 9). However, the opening up of colonial trade put
the East India Company at a competitive disadvantage. Private mercenaries became out-
moded with war and peace becoming matters for sovereign states exclusively, and mili-
tary service became tied to the forging of a national identity.
Similarly, in 17th century Britain, large sections of cities were private property, with
the West End in London described as a ‘gilded cage of privilege’. Policemen were paid
privately for their work, in a system whereby the victims initiated prosecutions, and
hired constables to help find offenders. As urban centres grew, victims often didn’t know
their offenders, and the employment of a ‘thief-taker’ to recover stolen goods made per-
fect sense; however, this system of private policing ended as security came to be seen as
a public good.
Moving into the Victorian era, Peel’s ‘new police’ increasingly emphasised the mor-
alisation of the poor and ordering of the streets. The 1824 Vagrancy Act accompanied a
shift in the focus of the police from the working class, to the impoverished and unem-
ployed. Ultimately, the police became a symbol for public power, acting as the ‘state on
the street’ (Brogden, 1991, cited in Fitzgibbon and Lea, 2020: 36).
Similar developments were seen in prisons, which prior to the 19th century simply
held those awaiting trial or transportation. Although Bentham’s panopticon prison sys-
tem contemplated private ownership and profit making, the changes brought about by
penal reformers required a shift to rehabilitation and universalised discipline that could
not be adequately managed by a fragmented, privately owned prison system.
987319CRJ0010.1177/1748895820987319Criminology & Criminal JusticeBook reviews
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