Who Patrols the Streets?

Over the past twenty years apparently almost all over the world a new division of responsibilities has arisen in the management of crime and disorder. Public security is no longer considered to be the task of the police alone. Other agencies, both public and private, have increasingly become involved in preventing and combating nuisance, social disorder and crime. Who Patrols the Streets? is based on an international comparative study on the pluralization of policing in a number of countries: England & Wales, Canada, the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium. New uniformed officers are to be found in all these countries, with names, such as surveillance officer, community guard, warden, support officer and municipal patroller, that differ as much as their uniforms, equipment, legal powers, social status, or relations with the public police. For each of these countries an analysis is presented of these new forms of policing in the (semi ) public space. What circumstances contributed to it? What are the positive and negative consequences of this plural policing? The complexity of this field becomes even more impressive if one realizes that this pluralization of policing is largely a local phenomenon, implying significant differences from city to city, and from municipality to municipality, even within a single country. Although the pluralization processes were broadly similar in all these countries, with more or less comparable factors contributing to the rise and differentiation of local policing, the huge differences between the countries are even more obvious. This book presents an analysis of the main similarities and differences in plural policing between these jurisdictions. A typology is presented of the different forms of non-police providers of policing in the public space. Several models are presented that are relevant for the debate on the future policy and organization of non-police policing.