Policing Communal Spaces: A Reconfiguration of the "Mass Private Property" Hypothesis

• NCJ Number: 208185
• Journal: British Journal of Criminology Volume: 44 Issue: 4 Dated: July 2004 Pages: 562-581
• Author(s): Michael Kempa; Philip Stenning; Jennifer Wood
• Date Published: July 2004
• Length: 20 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This paper reviews the literature on empirical studies of the extent and nature of private (nonstate) security operations around the world, along with interrelated developments in public policing.

Abstract

The review begins with an overview of the leading scholarly accounts of shifts in contemporary policing, with attention to Shearing and Stenning's hypothesis of "mass private property" (privately owned commercial spaces open to the public) and the responses of Jones and Newburn to this hypothesis. The critiques of Jones and Newburn provide a useful basis for re-examining the re-emergence of private policing and trends in nodal policing as a whole. Apparently the expansion of property owned by private individuals is strongly related to the re-emergence of paid private policing agencies, although the link is not that of linear causation. It is important to consider the broader hypothesis that underlies the "mass private property" circumstances, i.e., that shifts in property relations generally underlie and reflect changes in the substance and form of nodal policing as a whole. This paper argues that socioeconomic factors within a society determine who has the economic resources to afford hiring private police to address crime and disorder in those spaces they own and/or occupy. Those socioeconomic groups without the resources for private policing tend to receive the attention of public police, which in turn give these groups the sense that they are receiving an ordinate amount of police attention. Should various economic forces increase the polarization between the haves and the have-nots, it is likely that increased dissatisfaction with the widening gulf between these groups will result in various manifestations of frustration and anger, which will then bring a security response in various combinations of public and private policing agencies charged with maintaining order. 86 references