The Relationship Between Police and Private Security: Models and Future Directions

This will be a theory and policy paper designed to facilitate debate about the emerging and evolving relationship between the public and private policing sectors. The so-called pluralisation of policing is gathering momentum. New models are required that take into account the blurring of what have been conventionally considered parallel systems, with private security as very much the "lesser" or junior entity. The paper will introduce a number of Australian examples into the debate, and develops a set of descriptive models to account for, and explain, the main types of existing and emerging relationships. The paper will then present a prescriptive model to support the view that caution should temper any push towards a totally symbiotic cooperation between public and private policing. The best relationship for the future, the authors conclude, may be one that maintains a basic separation of powers, with some operational cooperation only where it is deemed essential and where oversight can be provided by executive-level standing committees