SOC 3750 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Private Police, Gated Community, Rand Corporation

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3750
• Professor: Patrick Parnaby

Document Summary

Week 11: tuesday, march 20th private policing. Historical context: private policing pre-dates public policing. In canada and us, we had private officers before we had public officers. In canada, usa, and uk, private police officers back then were hired on the state pay roll and were used to go westward and do private security for resource distraction industries (mining towns). The further west you went, the more violent it got: they also had the role of protecting trains because the trains held valuable things (mineral, merchandise, people, etc. , they also were there to quash labour unrest. Widespread movements to improve working conditions, usually through violent activities. So private police officers were used to control this: most famous private security corporations is pinkerton"s national detective agency the phrase. Private eye came from them: private policing became prominent and the business started to grow. In the us, there are a lot of critical voices about private policing.