The Era of Regulation (2001-10)

Abstract

The Private Security Industry Act 2001 marked the beginning of a critical new era in the politics of private security. For more than half a century, the pro-regulation reformers and re-legitimators had been advancing their respective agendas on the assumption that regulation would bring with it certain benefits. The reformers were operating on the assumption that regulation would serve to increase state control over the industry and give the impression of some kind of state monopoly in the security sector. The re-legitimators were working on the assumption that regulation would have the effect of imbuing the industry with the illusive quality of ‘stateness’ which was so crucial to the everyday citizen’s perceptions about how security ought to be delivered in Britain. However, with the passing of the Act, it was now time to discover the extent to which these assumptions could actually be translated into real-world outcomes. This final empirical chapter will examine this process of discovery and, in doing so, will mark out the terrain of the politics of private security in Britain today.KeywordsRegulatory RegimePrivate SecurityLicense SystemReform AgendaSecurity SectorThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.