Throughout the world, governments are beginning to explore the implications of the burgeoning private policing apparatus. Although many have expressed alarm at the dramatic increase in private policing capabilities throughout the developed, and more recently also in the developing world, there is not a simplistic dichotomy between public policing as good, and private policing as bad. The reality is that the development of private policing is a response to the real needs and concerns of those individuals paying for such services. Both systems — the state criminal justice system and the private security industry — perform common functions of social control and social ordering, although they may have different goals and justifications for the ordering in which they engage.

There has always been both private and public policing within societies. The public police have dominated policing over the last hundred years, but a shift towards private policing has taken place, particularly over the last two decades.¹ States originally set up public police forces to monopolise the use of coercive force in society. To assert state supremacy, they sought to limit what private groups were permitted to do to preserve the peace. The belief was that the state would be able to limit private initiatives legitimately if it was strong enough to guarantee order in society.²

The state recognised, however, that in a liberal democracy it cannot be all-powerful. Limits were therefore placed on what the state could legitimately do to enforce the peace. The demands for order had to be balanced against individual liberties and civil rights. The public police became subject to the limitations of due process and neutral application of the law.

The state often asserts that only state structures are in a position to act as non-partisan guarantors of the public interest. It is feared that private policing will serve private interests that are in conflict with those of the public interest. The state continues to put forth this idealised conception of the public police as neutral guarantors of the public interest, despite the plethora of media reports and academic articles that indicate the reverse.

A primary justification for private policing initiatives has been the misguided ‘vacuum’ theory. The vacuum theory states that, when the public police are unable to fulfil their responsibility to protect the public interest, and citizens in general, a vacuum is created which will be filled by private initiatives.³ The theory ignores the relative nature of the term ‘order’. There may be many different types of order that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The type of order that the state is attempting to guarantee may be different from the type of order businesses, affluent suburbs, townships and corporations wish to establish or preserve. Different types of order may call for different types of policing.

In South Africa, the transformation process has left every aspect of society open to change, even when it entails the drastic restructuring of entire systems. Most structures involved in social ordering are beyond the reach of state control because they are voluntary, fluid and temporary. Many of these informal systems of social control developed in response to a state that was widely perceived as hostile and illegitimate. Instances of such informal structures include street committees, self-defence units (SDUs) and community courts. Attempts at regulating such informal structures would likely result in their ‘delegitimisation’ by association with the state, and the simultaneous reformation of unregulated structures.

Policing is not something that the police own. This simple fact has instigated a reconfiguration and rethinking of policing world-wide.⁴ There have been large-scale changes that have redefined the role of the state. The welfarist project of finding the ‘one way’ has given way to the business logic of ‘best practice’, dictating in turn, that the regulatory agencies of the state allow for political franchising or sub-contracting.⁵

There must be a realisation that the public police are but one of the resources a community may utilise in solving its crime problems. These changes are evident in the move towards problem-solving or problem avoidance, rather than apprehension and prosecution, which are still what the better part of state police resources are concentrated on. The police are not expected to cater to these changes themselves, rather the state is expected to allow for new systems of social control (such as private policing) to address and service these new needs (or perhaps old needs in new ways) without undue interference. On some level, this is a reversal, or perhaps a literal interpretation of what advocates of ‘community policing’ have called for. Instead of the police utilising the community as a resource in the fight against crime, it is the community armed with a new understanding of policing relationships and roles that will utilise the police on occasion to aid in fighting crime.

Western societies have faced three fundamental problems with their police services: defining their role, devising effective controls over their discretion, and establishing the basis of their legitimacy.⁶ Community policing has been put forward as a possible solution to these problems. More specifically, community policing opens up a conceptual space for a new understanding of ‘policing’. Reacting to the failures of previous reform eras, community policing advocates propose a significant departure from the ways in which issues of role, control and legitimacy have been addressed to date.

Under community policing, order maintenance replaces law enforcement as the police mission; legalistic constraints on officer discretion are reduced, while direct and open communication with communities is increased; and policies and actions are justified less in terms of their impact on the objective risks of criminal victimisation and more in terms of the sense of peace, order and security they impart to the public.⁷ Community policing proposes to enhance the natural mechanisms of social control particular to a locale, rather than imposing an alien order over it. This is the first step towards ‘responsibilisation’.

Most community policing advocates see crime control as secondary, arguing that community policing implementation is justifiable on the basis of reducing the fear of crime and the sense of disorder that prevents legitimate pursuits in public spaces. Advocates of community policing justify the shift in mission from serious crime to order maintenance in two ways.⁸ Firstly, the reduction of minor disorders may ultimately lead to a reduction of serious crime by disrupting a cycle of community decay thought to produce serious crime. Secondly, order maintenance is justifiable in its own right in that it contributes to the establishment of an habitable, civil environment in which citizens can go about their business unmolested, and with less fear of molestation. The challenge lies in deciding what disorder and order consist of.

Where the law is vague in matters of distinguishing order from disorder, the basis for police intervention under community policing becomes the political will of the community. Community policing emphasises policing as the maintenance of order and peacekeeping. It focuses police thinking and efforts on community problems and disorder. Since order maintenance responsibilities are both a general and a pervasive function of contemporary policing, the police can only strengthen their legal and paralegal powers by adopting the problem-solving strategies inherent in community policing.⁹ However, the strength of the crime-fighting mandate is so entrenched in the police establishment that community policing advocates from within the formal sector have had to justify their proposals, at least in part, in terms of their ability to reduce crime.¹⁰ The police focus on crime control and crime reduction has meant that goals outside of this focus may need to be addressed by other organisations and other means.

The police have tended to view community policing as a partnership between the police and law-abiding citizens aimed at crime prevention and seeking solutions to long-term problems. It is a reflexive process, with the objective of improving the quality of life in city neighbourhoods. It is a philosophy about how policing is to be accomplished through fostering meaningful and ‘true’ partnerships with the community.¹¹

Moreover, community policing allows thinking about policing to change. It makes room for others to be involved in the act of policing, effectively eschewing the police claim to their traditional monopoly by the very ones that have claimed their right to that monopoly, i.e. the police. For all the critiques aimed at and shortfalls associated with community policing, it does accomplish one important objective, that of opening up the policing discourse to allow for groups other than the police to become involved in policing.

This shift allows for community input into the policing process. Moreover, it recognises that problem-solving requires both police and community input to be able to develop and explore creative options. The community approach is similar to an exercise in marketing: customer preferences are sought, and satisfying customer needs and wants, rather than selling a prepackaged ‘product’ is emphasised.

In the case of the police, they gather information about citizens’ needs, diagnose the nature of the problem, devise possible solutions, and then determine which segments of the community they can best serve and which can best be served by other institutions that provide alternative services, including crime control. This change in policing is real. For example, the Ontario Provincial Police have found themselves in the unfamiliar position of having to market themselves to communities that are now able to contract out for police services.

The community approach may involve ‘de-marketing’ certain police services, such as calls for rapid response services. This may involve the development of alternative calls for service or education programmes about the proper use of the police’s rapid response emergency number.¹² Such a number (10 111 in South Africa) has become an all-purpose call for service rather than limited to its intended purpose as rapid emergency response. For many citizens, it has become the primary means of accessing state resources, regardless of its original purpose. In South Africa, armed response may be one such means to overcome this issue. Individuals calling private security armed response do so only to access the specialised service provided, having no misconceptions about accessing state resources.

Despite the view of community policing outlined above, it continues to lack a unified and widely accepted definition. The community policing literature is unclear about what the term ‘community policing’ exactly means. Put simply, it means different things to different people.

To organise the concept, a three-phase development is constructed that charts the evolution of the community policing discourse. It is evolutionary as it reflects developments in understanding the role of the police in policing as well as the general rise of private policing. As stated above, the importance of community policing may reside in its ability to instigate a rethinking of policing generally, rather than as a specific programme for action.

The three phases are to be understood as imbricated and are therefore not mutually exclusive. The first phase is called ‘community police’ and involves the police assuming total responsibility for community policing. The second phase is ‘partnership policing’, and reflects an hegemonic shift in the policing discourse. The third phase is ‘community control’, where the community becomes primarily responsible for community policing. Each will be discussed in turn, and a general description will be provided of how as it exists in many Western societies, after which the uniqueness of the South African situation will be explained. Interestingly, South Africa is relatively advanced in this reconceptualisation of policing, despite having the community policing discourse applied retroactively. It would seem that South Africa is in the third phase of policing.

Since the mid-1980s, the police in many developed countries have faced a crisis of legitimacy. The crisis stemmed from allegations that the police were racist, classist and corrupt. The literature that emerged, recognised that different communities have different needs and views of the police. For the police to become more effective and efficient, the literature argued, they must have the support and co-operation of the communities they police. As a result, there was an interest in making the police more attractive to the communities they police. The inchoate community policing literature produced in the mid-1980s helped to guide the police in what were essentially public relations exercises with the aim of making communities more amenable to policing by traditional means.

The literature did not really attempt to question the traditional role or expertise of the police. Rather, it assumed that the police were so strongly entrenched as the monopolisers of force and policing that the goal should simply be to refocus attention on identified community problems. Importantly, such problems were only viewed as legitimate if they fit into the categories of crime and policing preconstructed by the formal professional police. The police were only interested in using their traditional resources to tackle traditional problems — only now with the aid of the community’s eyes and ears. The police aimed to seek new ways of increasing public input in order to make the public more policeable.

In phase one, the police are still seen as the central roleplayers in the definition and provision of policing. The centrality of the police is not explicitly stated because it is assumed, in fact, that they may attempt to construct quite the opposite. The police are often presented as the magnanimous monopolisers of policing now allowing the community to have a hand in defining policing. Phase one opens up conceptual space within the policing discourse, making civil society input into policing ‘thinkable’.

By the late 1980s, phase one was being criticised by a number of authors. As a result, a more progressive literature developed in response to the critiques being bandied about concerning the shortfalls of community policing. This second phase called for a fundamental shift in the role of the police in policing. Buzzwords such as ‘co-production’, ‘facilitation’ and ‘true partnerships’ began to emerge in the literature by the mid-1990s. There was recognition of the fact that the police and policing are actually different things and that meaningful roles do exist for individuals and institutions other than the police in the act of policing. Communities began to demand real changes to the traditional roles and goals of the police as a result of the now more explicit decoupling of the police and policing. Such changes were seen as crucial in meeting the needs of the consumers of policing.

The police, under the reconfiguration called for in phase two, are still assumed to possess a privileged place as the monopolisers of force. Moreover, the police remain central in that they are always to be partnered with some other institution in civil society. The police are always involved and therefore are able to have input with regard to who is to be policed, and by what means. The police under phase two, are considered to act as the facilitator or co-ordinator of policing. In phase two, the community and the police embrace the idea of policing as an act in which both have a legitimate and indispensable role. No longer is there acquiescence on the part of communities concerning their relegation to the role of ‘junior partner’ in policing.

In the third phase of community policing, communities begin to view the police as incapable of meeting many of their needs. There is also a recognition that the police are just one of the nodes involved in policing and security provision. The police are now seen as one among many institutions involved in the security process. Moreover, the police are viewed as just one of the resources to be used in problem-solving. There is a move towards meeting community goals through means other than partnerships with the police.

In the third phase, individuals and communities are in the unique position of being able to choose between alternative approaches to security and order. Communities have begun to adopt a new logic, one which has already been well-researched and documented in corporate and private security. This new logic entails individuals and communities seeking a number of different means to meet their locally defined security needs. The police are no longer necessary roleplayers in policing and security provision. The third phase effectively sounds the death knell for both the traditional monopoly of the police and for traditional thinking about policing. In South Africa, this third phase is highly developed.

Crime control is a major item on the public agenda in South Africa. The country seems to be plagued by a ‘crime wave’ which many see as a threat to the stability of the new democracy and a deterrent to international investment. Control may be seen as a central test of the government to govern, and the new democratic order to consolidate. There is also a link between the process of political transition and a rising crime rate. Transition requires a reworking of both the formal and informal instruments of social control within a society.¹³

What is interesting in South Africa, is that this rethinking of the role of the police in policing took place long before the community policing rhetoric became fashionable. Before 1994, the state’s police were largely illegitimate in the eyes of the majority of South Africans. As a result, the police and policing were decoupled long ago and informal popular policing flourished. The state was not considered a viable or legitimate roleplayer in the practice of policing for many South Africans. The rethinking reflected in the community policing literature was forced upon South Africans years before this occurred in most Western nations.

That is not to say that there have been no attempts to inject community policing rhetoric into South Africa. Community policing rhetoric has been applied in South Africa to aid in the transformation of the police. However, policing in South Africa has advanced far beyond the first stage of community policing and is firmly entrenched in the second, but perhaps even more so in the third phase. Private policing initiatives imply a new division of labour between the state and civil society in the definition and maintenance of ‘public’ order.¹⁴ Brogden and Shearing, in their book Policing for a New South Africa, recognise this in relation to policing reform for the new South Africa, stating that reform should be guided by the following relatively advanced community policing principles:

Despite the fact that many of the above points fit neatly with the third phase of community policing, they clearly fall short. There is a failure on the part of the authors to recognise the fact that there are fundamental contradictions in this guide to reform. The authors have failed to recognise the points that the police are special as bearers of force and that force should lie with the police are no longer relevant in the South African context. This is the case with regard to the fact that not only is armed response widespread, but so too are vigilante groups like People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD). Stricter regulation of such activities is therefore crucial. However, the government and policymakers are even less constructive when it comes to guiding the actual implementation of policy regarding private policing. The regulation of private security has largely been ignored while the state has concentrated on more pressing issues.

Community policing as a means to help society think differently about policing is superfluous in the context of South Africa. The police and policing were decoupled long ago as a result of both the abdication of the policing function on the part of the police, as well as the need to police the communities subsequently neglected. Moreover, policing the struggle against apartheid was a necessary component of informal structures, and townships became infamous for ‘necklacing’ suspected police informants. However, the bulk of informal policing was more in line with traditional forms and goals of policing. South Africa is unique in that it is relatively well-advanced into phase three of community policing.

This article is funded by the European Union.

C Shearing, Policing: Relationships between its public and private forms, in M Findlay & U Zuekic (eds), Alternative policing styles: Cross-cultural perspectives, Kluwer Law and Taxation, Deventer, Boston, 1993, pp 203-228.



Ibid.



Ibid.



M Kempa, R Carrier, J Wood & C Shearing, Reflections on the evolving concept of ‘private security’, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 1999 (forthcoming).



M Brogden & C Shearing, Policing for a new South Africa, Routledge, London, 1993.



S D Mastrofski, Community policing as reform: A cautionary tale, in R Greene & S D Mastrofski (eds), Community policing: Rhetoric or Reality?, Praeger, New York, 1988.



R Trojanowicz & B Bucqueroux, Community policing: A contemporary perspective, Anderson, Cincinnati, 1990; Mastrofski, ibid; C Murphy, The development, impact and implications of community policing in Canada, in Greene & Mastrofski, ibid; H Goldstein, Toward community-oriented policing: Potential, basic requirements, and threshold questions, Crime and Delinquency, 33(1), 1987, pp 6-30.



Mastrofski, ibid.



J S Albritton, The technique of community-oriented policing: An alternative explanation, in P C Kratcoski & D Dukes (eds), Issues in community policing, Anderson, Cincinnati, 1995.



J Zhao & Q C Thurman, Community policing: Where are we now?, Crime and Delinquency, 43(3), 1997, pp 345-357; S D Mastrofski, R E Worden & J B Snipes, Law enforcement in a time of community policing, Criminology, 33(4), 1995, pp 539-561.



P C Kratcoski & D Dukes, Perspectives on community policing, in Kratcoski & Dukes (eds), op cit.



G L Kelling & M H Moore, From political to reform to community: The evolving strategy of police, in Greene & Mastrofski, op cit.



M Shaw, Partners in crime?: Crime, political transition and changing forms of policing control, Research Report, 39, Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, 1995.



V Olgiati, Control for hire: The case of private security in Italy, in Findlay & Zuekic, op cit, pp 181-202.



Brogden & Shearing, op cit.