Privatising Justice: The Security Industry, War and Crime Control

Privatising Justice takes a broad historical view of the role of the private sector in the British state, from private policing and mercenaries in the eighteenth century to the modern rise of the private security industry in armed conflict, policing and the penal system.

The development of the welfare state is seen as central to the decline of what the authors call 'old privatisation'. Its succession by neoliberalism has created the ground for the resurgence of the private sector. The grow...