ABSTRACT
The present economic problems besetting the United Kingdom have led to a renewed debate about the modernisation of policing and the possible private provision of services. The fiscal crisis has created an imperative to ask some fundamental questions about the role of the policing and who is responsible for carrying out tasks, and who governs and directs the police. There is a growing body of scholarship that suggests policing is in the midst of a new wave of reform. Indeed, McLaughlin and Murji (1999) have talked of the demise of public policing. The last decades have seen the increased pluralisation of policing with private security rising relative to the decline in the public police's numbers.
