Policing is often thought to be a core responsibility of the state. In liberal democratic societies, to arrest, detain, search, and otherwise restrict an individual’s liberty represents a formidable expression of power. Public police forces are authorized to restrict an individual’s liberty, but they do so within the constraints of the ‘rule of law,’ which means that they must operate in a fair and unbiased manner and in accordance with elaborate protocols that have been developed to hold public police forces accountable for their actions.¹

Throughout the Western world, the demand for security has altered the urban landscape. In Canada,...

During the last four decades of the twentieth century some very significant changes occurred in policing in Canada and other democratic countries. These changes involved not only a restructuring of the institutions through which policing is undertaken but also the development of new techniques for actually accomplishing policing goals. In this chapter, we review what is known about these changes, their social implications, and their relevance for a reconsideration of the role of law in achieving more effective, realistic, just, equitable, and democratic policing in Canada.

We should make clear at the outset of our discussion what we mean when...

With the signing of the Vancouver Agreement in March 2000, the governments of Canada, British Columbia, and the City of Vancouver established a shared vision of ‘creating healthy, safe, and sustainable communities’ with an initial focus being the city’s Downtown Eastside (DTES).¹ The Vancouver Agreement defines the DTES as the area ‘bounded by the waterfront along the Burrard Inlet on the north, Richards Street on the west, Clark Drive on the east, and Fender and Terminal Streets on the south’ but notes that these boundaries ‘will not preclude initiatives that fall outside them yet which contribute to the goals and...

In his bookFantasy City,John Hannigan¹ provides a detailed analysis of the growth of spaces of consumption within postindustrial cities. These spaces fuel consumption through linking commodities and services to entertainment. Hannigan terms these spaces ‘fantasy cities,’ or ‘urban entertainment destinations.’ He points to the success of Disney as being pivotal in the development and proliferation of other sites that similarly mix elements of the fantastic – in the form of simulated spaces and ‘consumable experiences’² – with retail goods and services. Examples of this phenomenon abound. There is South Korea’s Kyongju World Tradition Folk Village, Hong Kong’s Ocean Park, or...

A body of recent policing literature suggests that the policing in Western societies is in a period of dramatic transition, change, and development.² In societies increasingly dominated by global market forces and neoliberal political values, governments have been forced to rationalize public services such as policing. As a result the public police have adopted various strategies of managerial and organizational reform. O’Malley states that policing has begun to reflect ‘the ascendance of neo-liberal rationalities and related social technology of new managerialism.’³ Shearing argues that, at the level of internal discourse, police services are emulating the new market language, as articulated...

It is now common sociolegal knowledge that the once-accepted categories of ‘public’ and ‘private’ are becoming a less and less effective conceptual rubric from which to mount serious intellectual inquiries into policing. Something quite important has been happening to the configuration of policing in the last three decades. This fundamental transformation involves the steady growth of private security, most notably in North America,¹ but also in Britain² and other European nations.³ In Canada, private security employment matched and then surpassed public police employment in the late 1960s to early 1970s.⁴ Today, private security employment is at least twice that in...

The growth of private policing agencies challenges the historical monopoly of the state in providing for public safety and security, raising concerns over impartiality, accountability, and incursion into public police jurisdiction and resources. However, the demand for private security services continues to grow and has expanded beyond protecting private property to include forensic services, investigations, and crime prevention. The distinctions made between the public police and private security forces now have fewer fundamental differences to support them. Yet the debate continues to focus on training standards, pay scales, and enforcement activities, while the question of the proper role of policing...