Consumer Culture and the Commodification of Policing and Security

This paper sets out to make sociological sense of some contemporary trends in the consumption of policing services and security products. I argue that the commodification of policing and security can fruitfully be theorised and investigated in terms of the spread of consumer culture, a contention that I demonstrate in three (related) ways. I begin by examining how a culture of consumption is pervading the practices and rhetoric of the public police and outlining the impact of `consumerism' on lay sensibilities towards policing. I then set out some prevailing trends in the consumption of protective services and hardware and consider the effects of a burgeoning `security market' on the construction of authority, subjectivity and social relations. Finally, I detail a number of possible points of resistance to the spread of commercially-delivered policing and security and argue that these provide both some potential cultural limits to the extension of a `consumer attitude' in this field, and a space within which to think about, and develop, modes of policing shaped by citizens acting in a democratic polity rather than consumers operating in the market.