This paper examines the growth and significance of private policing, which has received considerable attention in North America and the UK but relatively little in the rest of Europe. The paper draws upon European sources to describe the implications of the privatization of policing for civil liberties and the expectations that citizenship carries regarding state provision of policing services, and for the development of a market in policing in the post-1993 European Union. It suggests that there is the potential for the emergence of a new ‘policing complex’ and considers how certain developments in sociological theory may illuminate aspects of this trend. It concludes by offering a future European research agenda on this topic and comments on the social policy implications of a mixed economy of policing that erodes the citizen's legitimate expectations of equality in protection from crime and incivilities.
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Nigel South (1994) studied this question.