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Gives historical background to the new interest in “showcasing” inner cities of the USA. Focuses on Philadelphia as an example of government‐business alliance. Notes the former negative attitudes of public and private police toward each other and contrasts this with the growing understanding of their complementary roles.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the development of the private security sector in several former Yugoslav countries that have gone through difficult post‐conflict reconstruction including the field of security.

The paper takes a qualitative approach to data collection that includes interviews with experts in the field of private security from several ex‐Yugoslav countries.

While much effort is invested in the rebuilding of new, democratic public police forces in post‐conflict societies, little attention is usually paid to non‐state providers of security, for example, private security industry. Private security could, potentially, be both a crucial additional stabilising factor in assuring security in post‐conflict environments and a cause of instability if it lacks legislative control, professionalism and ethical guidance. Hence, both the state and the police should support the private security industry in helping it to achieve legitimacy and, where appropriate, partner state bodies. A well‐regulated private security sector could also become a substantial employer of large numbers of demobilised combatants in post‐conflict societies. Analyses of private security sectors in several former Yugoslav countries that experienced conflict identify a number of potential advantages and challenges. On one hand, in those countries with appropriate legislation in this regard, private security is becoming a valuable additional provider of security, while on the other hand, even strict regulation has failed to prevent some private security companies maintaining links with paramilitary, political and organised crime groups. Legal regulation is a precondition for the stable development of private security in those countries focussed upon in this paper, and this is not possible without appropriate action regarding the training, integrity and ethical behaviour of private security officers.

The results are limited to developments in ex‐Yugoslavia, and may not be easily generalized to other situations and venues.

This paper provides a useful source of information for security policy makers and security experts in post‐conflict societies.

This paper extends understanding of the development of private security in post‐conflict societies.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate historical theories of political economy as means better to clarify and classify contemporary state police and private policing practices.

A diverse historical investigation of largely, non‐traditional public police history was conducted by utilizing a selective variety of social, political, and economic sources.

The paper finds that several theoretical features of eighteenth and nineteenth century Marxian, classical, and neoclassical political economy have contributed in defining the origins of contemporary American public police and private policing practices. Born from these perspectives, public goods theories frameworks, in conjunction with Wilson's police officer job function typologies in Varieties of Police Behavior, more clearly illustrate the current political and economically defined state supported police relative to private market arrangements.

This research describes the positioning of this mixed economy in theoretical fashion, but does not provide contemporary private sector market growths or publicly supplied police trends that are a suitable next step for further research.

The public “monopoly” of state supported police is largely rejected. More interdisciplinary research approaches should be pursued in the twenty‐first century that better reflect the American political and economic realities of public and private forms of policing.

This paper is highly original when considering the paucity of theory utilized in describing simultaneous state and private policing scenarios.

The purpose of this chapter is to question the degree and the nature of legitimacy and force held by private security, and how this can affect the role private actors are playing in the field of policing and in the governance of security.

We draw mainly on existing academic literature on private policing, as well as our own qualitative research conducted in Canada.

If private security personnel have undeniably less legitimacy and force than their public counterpart, two nuances should be brought: (1) there is a tendency toward a shrinking of the gap between both sectors; and (2) these shortcomings do not represent such a problem, considering that, first, private security actors are usually given specific legal powers (e.g., the landlord’s), and, second, they do not rely on legitimacy as much as the police do in order to do their job. That being said, as private security officers and companies are likely to become increasingly involved in traditional police functions (most notably patrolling the public space), their lack of legitimacy and legal powers could significantly impede their actions in the future.

This chapter brings nuances to the supposed lack of force and legitimacy that plague the private security industry. It also sheds light on some of the inner rationales that characterize the dynamics within public and private policing.

During the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the onslaught of flooding, the single most important role for government and the public sphere was deemed to be law and order, at times to the exclusion of other public responsibilities. Law and order were articulated almost exclusively as a policing matter with the emphasis on order rather than law. Policing took different public and private forms in the early days of the flooding. This chapter examines the nature of that policing and the unquestioned presence of private police as a key element of the law and order response to Katrina in New Orleans.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the nature of the working relationship between police officers and private security officers in South Korea. More specifically, this study examines how police officers and security personnel perceive the working relationships between the two organizations, their attitudes on the professionalism of security personnel, their views of ways to improve the working relationship, and their perceptions of the future of public and private police relationships.

Similar to the experience of many developed and developing economies, South Korea has experienced a significant increase in the number of private security personnel employed in the last three decades relative to the employment data on law enforcement officers. To reveal the nature of the working relationship between the two groups, this study utilized a recent survey of 258 police officers and 134 private security officers in South Korea.

While both law enforcement and private security officers were positive about their relationship with each other, security officers are more optimistic about achieving improvements in police/security relationships. Further, the findings also reveal that both police officers and security professionals believe that the other group could do more to encourage a positive working relationship.

While this research has made modest inroads into assessing the views of street level bureaucrats, further research is also needed to assess the extent to which the administrators of both public and private police organizations consider each other viable partners in addressing citizens' safety concerns.

The level of optimism and support among private security personnel concerning the role of security is greater than that of police officers, which indicated that the police could do more to improve the relationship between the two.

Empirical research on the nature of the relationship between the public and the private professionals in a South Korean context enabled investigation into the aspects inherent to developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of police‐security relationships in three different continents that are unique in their economic, political, and social culture. These countries include a developed economy (USA), an emerging economy (South Korea), and a transitional economy (Slovenia). More specifically, it compares the views that private and public police personnel in a diverse set of countries hold about one another on various issues relating to their working relationships and their efforts to improve them.

Data for the paper came from 1,158 police and security officers from the USA, South Korea, and Slovenia. All three studies employed survey methodology. The English language instruments are translated into the Korean and Slovenian languages and both instruments are back translated from the respective languages into English to check for validity.

While the findings for all the three countries vary in terms of the degree of personnels' positive attitudes toward one another, the overall levels of support from security professionals toward police officers appear positive in all the three countries. Among the police, personnel from the USA relative to other countries appear to have the most progressive and accepting attitude toward security personnel's role as partners. The varying degree of differences between South Korea and Slovenia may be a reflection of the centralized police structures, cultural and historical characteristics, and variations in the levels of economic liberalization policies. Findings suggest that in all the three countries security personnel are trying to reach out to the police to play their part in community policing compared to the police reaching out to the private sector.

There is a time lag in data collection (seven‐year period) as the data for this paper were not collected at one point in time in these countries. Despite this limitation, the use of many identical questions in surveys in all the three countries offers an opportunity for this comparative research.

Most research on police officers' job satisfaction has been done in relation to individual factors while ignoring the role of organizational culture and environmental factors. Further, this setting offers an opportunity to test if democratization of police organizations influences job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence police officers’ tendency to cooperate with private investigators.

A questionnaire survey method was used on a sample of 377 police officers in South Korea.

The findings suggested that, unlike previous literature, police officers’ rational choice (cost vs benefit calculation) was the most important factor, and characteristics of cases also significantly influenced police officers’ tendency to work with private investigators. Also, officers’ job assignment was relevant, unlike the organizational cultural context for cooperation.

Prior studies have continuously emphasized the importance of cooperation between public police and private police (particularly private investigators) in order to enhance effectiveness in crime fighting and the preventive functions of policing. However, the studies have not produced empirical evidence as to how cooperation between the two sectors could be enhanced. This study fills this void in the literature.

The public fascination for private investigators has led to an abundance of imagery in popular culture media. This study aims to examine the views of practising private investigators regarding their professional images of dirty work.

To fill the gap in the literature, this study used data collected from semi-structured interviews with 33 industry practitioners from 3 Australian states. The paper investigates private investigator’s perceptions about themselves/job roles and the public perceptions of private investigators in Australia. Interviews were recorded and transcripts created. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken.

Private investigators were drawn from a range of professions, including public policing and government regulation. The findings indicate that the reality differs from the images typically portrayed in popular culture. Interviewees discussed the contrasts between media images and reality, providing a more complex portrayal of private investigation and what private investigators find satisfying and challenging about their work.

This study is helpful for improving the understanding of private policing, the media views of policing, those who conduct work within an environment considered to be tainted and their views of self.

Using a qualitative research design, this paper offers insights into the challenges facing private investigators and how they reconcile being in a tainted occupation with providing a necessary service to the community.