Bubbles of Governance: Private Policing and the Law in Canada

Abstract

AbstractIn the last three decades, the public-private organization of policing in Canada has undergone significant change. It is now common sociological knowledge that there has been formidable growth in private security alongside evolving forms of private governance. These changing social relations have resulted in the prominence of actuarial practices and agents to enforce them. This paper examines how the Canadian socio-legal context affects and is affected by both private security and new, more aggressive, ‘parapolicing’ organizations. We update the state of knowledge on the powers of private security personnel by examiningCriminal Codeprovisions in apost-Charterlegal environment, comparing provincial trespass Acts, and analyzing how one aggressive ‘Law Enforcement Company’ as well as other private security firms, more generally, are both enabled and constrained by these legal provisions.