ABSTRACT
The past two decades have witnessed dramatic growth in the number of private security companies in the Caribbean and significant expansion of their remit, a trend reflected in wider global developments in the industry. In some cases, private security personnel outnumber police, and they are frequently blessed with greater resources and technical capacity. Despite this proliferation, however, the private security industry remains under- and, in some places, even un-regulated. As a consequence, there exist unanswered questions regarding the nature of the relationship between private security firms and both the state and their public counterparts, the nature of insecurity in the Caribbean, and the extent to which greater provision of private security services actually leads to greater meaningful security. This chapter seeks to engage with these issues, by drawing on comparative data from St. Lucia, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Haiti. It assesses the nature and consequences of the industry’s rise in the region, and reflects on its likely evolution in the future.
