UK Plans Private Police Force

An anonymous reader writes "'Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighborhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatization plan,' The Guardian reports. 'The contract is the largest on police privatization so far, with a potential value of £1.5bn over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5bn depending on how many other forces get involved.' A worrying development in a country with an ever-increasing culture of surveillance and intrusive policing."

Comments

Fascism

[BasilBrush]

And so Britain sinks further into Fascism.

Re:Fascism

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Unfortunately, no matter how often 'privatization' enthusiasts ignore the issue or assert the contrary, 'privatization' tends to end up meaning an outcome that combines the least delightful aspects of state intrusion and ill-controlled corporate power...

'Privatization' almost never means "The state is going to abandon function X and leave people to figure it out on their own initiative." It means "The state is going to retain function X, and function X will continue to be taxpayer funded; but the execution of function X will be delegated to FooDyne LLC. who will now have access to the public purse and some measure of state power."

This isn't 100% certain to go badly; but it doesn't reduce the state's role(it just moves some of the state's role 'off the books' and into opaque contractual lumps, rather than those much-demonized public sector employees) and it tends to feed a class of contracting corporations that become essentially obligate parasites of the government, ever more efficient at landing juicy contracts, if not necessarily actually delivering on them...

Re:Fascism

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given the incredible enthusiasm with which the US has largely rolled over and wagged its tail in response to the steady expansion of police power and militarization to battle the drugs menace, I strongly suspect that the capability of the population to kill mercenaries would translate into virtually no action whatsoever. The few exceptions would then be characterized as extremists and dealt with(small arms are common, the sort of stuff you'd need to stop armored vehicles, less so...)

Arguably, placing one's faith in guns as an antidote to policing is like expecting the widespread availability of strong cryptographic algorithms to protect internet privacy: Architecturally it might be within the realm of the plausible; but it's behaviorally absurd.

Re:Fascism

[catchblue22]

And so Britain sinks further into Fascism.

Take an honest look at what has happened in the US/UK since the early 1980's. We have seen a steady erosion of democratic state involvement in the economy, and a massive migration of money away from the control of the state and into the hands of a few very well monied private interests. When those monied interests successfully cause your taxes to be lowered, what has really happened is that the money that you would have paid in taxes now remains in private hands. In effect, instead of you paying taxes to build roads, you pay your money to the private interests in exchange for some other service. In other words, your lower tax rates result in an increase in wealth and power for the organizations that sell you goods.

Also, the educational system has been fundamentally altered in the past few decades. University degrees in fields that are concerned with the general public interest have largely disappeared, replaced by degrees that are glorified exercises in job training. The broad liberal arts education that was the foundation of the development of our democratic institutions has been made an expensive and disappearing luxury. Education that causes a person to question, to think, to understand our history and culture doesn't exist in a meaningful way in our civilization any more. If you want political power today, you seek your training in administration, in business methods, instead of in philosophy, history and other humanities. Money is the lingua franca, the ultimate justification for all activities. Education itself is now treated as an economic good, something to improve the GDP instead of a good in and of itself. Greed and selfishness, once generally thought of as negative characteristics are now glorified in our money based brave new world.

Do not rebut my arguments by stating for example that "arts students don't get jobs", or that "you cannot afford to spend money on a degree that doesn't pay". I am fully aware of this reality. I ask you to step back outside these statements, to look at the changes of the last 30 years in terms of the health of our civilization, morally and ethically. Is the wide stratification of wealth that has developed recently a good thing for society? Must it be this way? And are the above mentioned developments a symptom of a gradual slide into what might be recognized as fascism?

Re:Fascism

[catchblue22]

You act like money didn't control everything from the beginning.

That's how it's been since the very introduction of money and an economic system based around the collection of as much as money possible, and will be until it's eventual abolition.

I disagree. The ancient Greeks invented what we know as money, money as a universal medium of exchange. At the same time however, the ancient Greeks developed a culture that expressed deep ambivalence about greed and money and its influence on people. In the myth of Erysikhthon, the king is cursed with insatiable hunger that causes him to consume everything around him. In the end, he ends up consuming his own flesh. The myth of Midas is also an obvious example. In Sophocles' writings, money "creates friends, honours, tyranny, and physical beauty"; money is said to "destroy cities, drive men from their homes, transform good men into evil-doers, and to cause men to know every type of impiety". And yet it was also obvious to the ancient Greeks that money increased their standard of living.

There is a difference between a society that worships money and its accumulation, versus a society that remains wary of money but that also uses it as a means to improve material well being. In the last 30 to 40 years, we have clearly moved from the latter and towards the former. Just because we use money doesn't mean we must worship it.

It is a huge problem.

[khasim]

Because you will have TWICE the ability to obscure any abuses.

Was it the government oversight bureau that was responsible? (no)

Was it the private company that was responsible? (no)

Because the company will have been found to have been acting on guidelines from the government that were written with incorrect input from the company that was based upon a faulty understanding of the government's requirements. Systemic errors were found that will be addressed at the next board meeting with the government regulators.

Meanwhile, the company hires lobbyists to ensure that no matter who is voted in they will still be dependent upon the "campaign contributions" of the company.

Re:Great...

[DrVomact]

Blackwater was renamed Xe. However, it is important to note that the founder and CEO during the Iraq war sold off the company and is no longer involved.

I have to ask why you think that is important. To my mind, the important issue lies in the fact that companies like Xe exist and are contracted by the U.S. Government at all; the personal culpability of the former CEO of the Company Formerly Known As... is, to me, relatively trivial.

The proper generic name for such corporations is, by ancient usage, "mercenaries" or perhaps "mercenary contractors". The fact that modern States now once more employ mercenaries signifies a distinct decline in the State as an institution, because one of the essential characteristics of a State is that it holds a monopoly on violence. By hiring mercenaries, states essentially solve short-term problems (inability to sustain a war through conscription, direct responsibility for atrocities, etc.), but create another set of problems the extent of which is not immediately obvious. One such problem is that once the State becomes reliant on mercenaries, it is at their mercy—something Machiavelli understood quite well.