Book Reviews
| Published date | 01 December 1999 |
| Date | 01 December 1999 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/a010366 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BOOK REVIEWS
TREVOR JONES AND TIM NEWBURN, Private Security and Public Policing. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998, xiv + 288pp., £40.00.
To start with the conclusion, Jones and Newburn have produced a ‘must read’ book
for students and teachers of police studies. The heart of the book is an empirical study
of two areas within the London Borough of Wandsworth, as well as Borough level
policing provision. Their method was telephone interviews (mainly) with key players
and with a random sample of suppliers of private security identified from the British
Telecom Business Database and stratified into five groups. These are suppliers of i)
security services and equipment, ii) electronic security equipment, iii) investigation
services, iv) bailiffing and debt collection services, and v) mechanical security equip-
ment such as locks, safes etc. Crucially, the ‘key players’ included senior officials, not
only in the relevant division of the Metropolitan police but also in so-called ‘hybrid’
organisations such as the British Transport Police, the (then) Post Office Investigation
Department, the Health and Safety Executive, and in various local authority depart-
ments with more or less explicit policing functions.
Both empirical and theoretical questions are addressed in the interpretation of the
data. Empirically, the authors demonstrate that the most rapid growth in the private
security industry in Britain (assuming Wandsworth to be typical) occurred in the
1950s and 1960s. At this time the security industry overtook the conventional police
forces in terms of manpower. Since then, both have increased at similar rates. The
authors argue that the more high profile functions now undertaken by private security
firms, such as those previously carried out by state personnel (e.g. prisoner escort), or
those in private spaces to which the public nonetheless have access (e.g. shopping
malls), have fed into an incorrect impression that private security’s strongest period
of growth has been more recent and still continues.
The other major empirical contribution has been a mapping of the range of security
organisations presently functioning within the research area, and it is in making sense
of these data that the authors make their most important theoretical contribution.
Having discussed both recent theoretical advances and emergent theoretical problems
in their opening chapters, followed by their basic empirical presentation, Jones and
Newburn then consider the central theoretical question of how private police, and
indeed police in general, may best be conceptualised. They suggest five dimensions of
analysis, namely sectoral (state v market), spatial (characteristics of sites of operation),
legal powers, function and geographical (international/national/local). Being locally
based, their work does not contribute to an analysis of the geographical dimension,
and in terms of function they find few distinctions except that state police are required
to remain generalists and can be said to have an expanding function, whereas private
SOCIAL &LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (199912) 8:4 Copyright © 1999
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 8(4), 593–605; 010366
10 Reviews (jl/k&ho) 28/10/99 2:06 pm Page 593
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