Privatizing Plod

The proposed reorganization of our police forces  is bound to prove a missed opportunity. Rather than managerialist mergers, why shouldn't we privatize the police?
If you think this is an impractical right-wing idea, think again.
It's not impractical. A major police service - protection of (some) people and property - has already been privatized. There are now half a million people working in the private security industry - four times as many regular policemen.
What's more, there's a precedent for a successful private police system - 18th century England. This  paper by David Friedman says of that time:

Private enforcement of criminal law seems to have been a reasonably successful system. While contemporaries, then as now, worried about rising crime rates, there seems to be little evidence that crime rates were actually rising...Much, perhaps most, of the drop in the crime rate between 1660 and 1900 occurred prior to the introduction of paid police.

And it's not right-wing. The fact is that the police fail the poor. Poor areas often suffer much more crime than richer ones, and the poor - especially blacks - are more likely to be harrassed by the police. The police would rather play games with drug dealers, attack demonstrators and protect politicians than serve  the poor.
There should, therefore, be more demand for radical reform.
One possibility would be for the government to allocate police vouchers. People could then use these (possibly along with cash) to vote for their preferred suppliers of police services at a borough level. This would permit private firms to compete alongside  the established police, or allow people to vote for the bundle of services they want from the existing police force. They could allocate x% of the budget to stopping graffiti, y% to catching drug-dealers and so on.
For my purposes, the precise institutional mechanism is not important. All I'm saying is that we should consider ways of making the police more responsive to public wishes.
Of course, there's not a snowball in hell's chance of this happening. Our political class don't have the imagination. And even if they did, they'd rather keep the police as Tony Blair's boot-boys rather than make the state the servant of the people.

Comments

[Paddy Carter]

what's this? The poor are more likely to be victims of crime, yet when the police attempt to catch criminals they are harrassing the poor? Unless the poor are victims of wealthy middle class burglars and muggers. The police are Tony Blair's boot boys? For God's sake, you may think the police service could be better, but this is just tosh. Playing games with drug dealers? What - trying to arrest them? what a lark! Of course it's just because politicians are cretins that lack imagination that they haven't allowed local people to set local police budgets by referendum, because that sounds like a really great idea.

Anyway, I'm off to design a renumeration structure for a privatised police force that would not end up "failing to poor"

[Stevey]

I would never have believed that such a scheme could be described as "left-wing". You seem to think that it is so because it would help the poor, but by that token so is being pro free market, supporting social conservatism, and pretty much the entire right-wing agenda.

[Chris Williams]

Friedman's history is rather suspect, and his knowledge of old crime stats is rather thin.

No, we should do what the Tory Party is toying with, and put policing under local democratic control. Like the Yanks do.

http://www.historyandpolicy.org/archive/policy-paper-16.html

[Innocent Abroad]

Of course the reason that Sir Robert Peel created a Police Force (in the sense that we understand it to-day) is because he was a Marxist avant la lettre...

They've had privatised law enforcement in Northern Ireland for some time, kneecapping is so much more tax-efficient than trials and prisons and probation officers.

[Chris Williams]

The rouble with kneecapping is that it doesn't appear to stop crime. Even the shinners have noticed this.

[Innocent Abroad]

Chris, the only thing that has been found to stop crime is a reduction in the supply of young males (who do most of it).

The slaughter in the trenches of 1914-18 is by far the most effective long-term crime reduction measure ever experienced in this country.

Crime can also be postponed in the short-term by "total war" of the 1939-45 type and in the very short term by a Royal Wedding...

[bwanadik]

Economist had a good story a few weeks back on how PCSOS are quashing competition in the security market, complete with the explicit Ian Blair quote "we're trying to monopolise the market".

But yeah, given how long it's taking to stop the state monopolising health and education, probably be at least another half century before anything like this hits the agenda.

[dsquared]

hmmm this would be a lot more convincing if either a) we hadn't tried part-privatising a lot of other local authority services along the same model or b) if it had worked.

If you referred to this scheme as what it is; "PFI policing", it would be a lot harder to advocate it with a straight face.

[nik]

I don't believe no-one has pointed this out: the traditional method of dealing with police officers who accept money for services has been to put them in jail, and put the person who gave them money in jail. You are proposing legalising bribery.

Police officers are supposed to uphold the law, not act in the interest of the person who give them the most cash. If you enabling people to hire and sack police officers this is what will end up happening, what you are proposing is deeply corrupt.

[Chris Williams]

nik, what are you talking about? The traditional way to treat police officers who accept money for services is to call them 'additional constables', and send them out to provide security in theatres, stand outside shops, police football matches, defend mines against pickets, etc.

So:

The chief officer of police of a police force may provide, at the request of any person, special police services at any premises or in any locality in the police area for which the force is maintained, subject to the payment of the police authority of charges on such scales as may be determined by that authority (12 & 13 Eliz. II c. 48: s.15(1)).

Not that most criminologists know about this, yet. I'm working on it.