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

Great...

[Frosty Piss]

RoboCop!

Re:Great...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd buy that for a pound sterling!

Re:Great...

[DrVomact]

Snow Crash! (A science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson; it did a good job forecasting this trend...and satirizing it.)

The Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld, also noted the trend toward privatization of state functions in the early nineties. (See for example, the The Transformation of War and the somewhat ponderous The Rise and Decline of the State.) As he predicted, the European-model nation-state continues to decline; as it weakens, it transfers its powers to private entities, and its sovereignty to more nebulous institutions that are not nation-states at all (such as the European Union, NATO, the UN, etc.) This in turn leads to a loss of faith in the nation-state by its citizens, until the state's government is no longer seen as legitimate. Not surprisingly, van Creveld is a fan of Snow Crash.

This has also been happening in the U.S., most prominently during the recent Iraqi Infelicity. As you may remember, the U.S. State Department outsourced its security operations to The Company Formerly Known As "Blackwater" during this time. This led to a fiasco in which a team from said organization—which was "protecting" a State Department delegation—shot up a crowd of harmless civilians with automatic weapons fire from armored vehicles, causing numerous death and mild embarrassment to the U.S. State Department. They should have been much more embarrassed, of course—official heads should have rolled—but such actions no longer have their just consequences. The U.S. Army also worked with TCFKAB and similar organizations with names like Triple Canopy, Executive Outcomes (I think that's defunct, actually), and companies smarter than TCFKAB who don't try to get business through publicizing their names. Of course, TCFKAB is still in business, under another name that I can't at the moment recall, probably because that name was designed to be impossible to remember. In addition to outright combat, other civilian agencies pretty much have taken over the role of providing the U.S. Army's infrastructure, and the entire "re-construction" of Iraq was handled by large corporations in a most unseemly manner.

So why is everyone surprised when the Brits want to outsource a bit of policing?

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.

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

[Canazza]

I'm so glad Scotland controls it's own Law budget.
One more reason to vote for independence though.

Re:Fascism

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It isn't really 'potential' anymore: meet Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan...

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

[jamstar7]

I don't know of any government function that was privatized that actually saves the government any money. From what I've seen, they privatize, and the people doing the work get replaced by a bunch of semitrained minimum wagers while the corporation keeps negociating for ever higher priced contracts. It happened with the Post Office, it's happening in the prisons, it happened to Medicare.

Back in the day, Medicare payments came out of my income taxes. Then, they set aside a new specific Medicare tax. Then under Bush II, Medicare went private. Now they withhold Medicare premiums from peoples' Social Security checks to pay for private health insurance tarted up to look like Medicare. Back in the day, Medicare's paperwork costs were 2% of every healthcare dollar, while private insurance ran up to 30%. Then they passed HIPPA, the Healthcare Information Portability and Privacy Act, to bring private insurance paperwork practices in line with Medicare and make the data easily transported between the systems. Now that Medicare is private, healthcare costs are soaring, nobody gives a shit about the 'portability' portion of HIPPA, they just fine and/or sue about any percieved breach of the 'privacy' aspects of the act. Paperwork costs under the 'new' Medicare are climbing through the roof and will soon reach that 30% mark. And this is progress?

So now Britain has private police. Do they have private prisons like they do here in the US? How soon until the court system there goes private as well?

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.

Well maybe you can cancel the contract?

[icebike]

The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:

The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources

That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).

The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.

Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.

WARNING! SOULSKILL POSTED THIS ARTICLE!

[Gordonjcp]

As usual, Soulskill has posted yet another article pushing nonsense gleaned from a quick look at a headline.

"The UK" is not getting a private police force. Two small police forces in England are planning on contracting out patrolling some areas like city centre shopping districts to private firms.

As it turns out, it's not actually legally possible for them to do this, so it's unlikely to happen any time soon.

Re:WARNING! SOULSKILL POSTED THIS ARTICLE!

[geckipede]

I live in the West Midlands of England. We already have private security firms contracted to patrol low crime areas, and that has been in place for a few years now. The plans being discussed in the article are a significant expansion of that, adding yet more police duties to those companies.

I do support the use of private security guards to wander around in places where all that is needed is a biped capable of moving while wearing a uniform. There are many places that don't need police patrols. However, I am very much opposed to going any further than that into real police activities. Investigating crimes is something that only real trained and authorised police officers should be doing. These proposals do include that.

Sad

[MightyMartian]

The Metropolitan Police Force was one of Sir Robert Peel's (an actual real Tory, and not just the fake post-Thatcher kind) greatest achievements, and a model for police forces the world over. It was precisely because of fragmentation that Peel went this route, producing a stunningly effective law enforcement agency.

Re:Of course, prior to mid 1800s

[TFAFalcon]

Well in some ways it might be good to return to that kind of an arrangement for a few days each year. Just long enough to lynch the outgoing politicians on the day after elections. Now that would be a pretty good motivator to stop pissing voters off.

A Bit of Fry and Laurie: Prescient

[Tommy Bologna]

This must be a rerun ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6CkltzGAxY

Re:Of course, prior to mid 1800s

[BasilBrush]

Witch hunts were also common back then. Real ones, where they'd take women who'd committed no crime and burn them at the stake.

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:It is a huge problem.

[Capt. Skinny]

In the US, public agencies -- like police departments -- are often immune from liability in civil cases. If the UK is the same, privatization could open up the potential for abuses to actually be punished.

Re:It is a huge problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't, agencies working for the government almost always retain Crown Immunity, they cannot be sued, and contracts details are usually kept secret even from parliament. It's the worst possible combination. Go UK PLC!

Re:It is a huge problem.

[Mitsoid]

Private Police Forces in the US are a nightmare, I hope they don't become common in the UK and then in the US...

2 of my local colleges use "Private Police Forces" who, among other duties, also issue tickets. Unfortunately as a private business they are issuing these tickets out of the state capitol 3 hours away. If for some reason you want to challenge the ticket you have to drive 6 hours round trip just to be told the officer is not in attendance at the court, and you'll have to come back another day...

So $70 in gas round trip, twice in order to actually get to challenge the ticket... Missing 2 days of work... they force you to pay, one way or another!

------------------
Now, if the above case HAPPENED 3 hours away from my home and I had to return to the area the crime supposedly happened -- that's different. This is simply "the only reason you have to go 3 hours is because that's where the private police business is based out of"

Get hooligans off the streets of Britian . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

. . . and into private police uniforms where they belong!

Bobby Helmets, the new look for Hoodies, Next Generation.

Dim: Well. Well, well. Well, well, well, well, if it isn't little Alex. Long time no viddy, droog. How goes?
Alex: It's... it's impossible. I don't believe it.
Georgie: Evidence of the old glazzies. Nothing up their sleeves. No magic, little Alex. A job for two, who are now of job age. The police.

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