ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates some of the relationships between private policing and the development of capitalist economic systems. It argues that the emergence and transformation of profit-oriented police services must be understood as part of a larger movement toward the extension of capitalist control over the labor process and the rationalization of productive activity. The chapter discusses three distinctive stages in the privatization—policing as piece-work, policing in the industrial age, and policing under corporate capitalism—with special attention to how these arrangements reveal the priorities and reflect the limitations of capitalist development. It examines the privatization of policing must be understood in relation to the organization of society on a market basis. The origins of private policing during this era are to be found, curiously enough, in the office of the constable. In segregated industrial areas the tasks of maintaining order and protecting profits were essentially the same. Under welfare capitalism private police protected profits by breaking strikes and disrupting labor organization.
