------------------------------
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 93 00:38:55 GMT
From: russell@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker)
Subject: Tim Evans on UK cop privatisation
To: libernet@Dartmouth.EDU

The following article appeared in the 17 June 1993 *Guardian*
(London) and was written by Libertarian Alliance member
Tim Evans, who can be reached by electronic mail at
tim@trident.demon.co.uk.


SOURCE: The Guardian  DATE: 17 June 1993  FEA  PAGE: 20

The selling of Cop Shop plc
TIM EVANS

How far down the road towards privatised police forces will Home Secretary
Michael Howard be tempted to go?

AS POLICE costs spiral and crime rates soar, Home Secretary Michael Howard
is in the new hot seat of government. Under pressure from the Tory right
to act as the prime defender of the free market faith, Howard confirmed
yesterday that he is turning to the private sector for some much-needed
improvements in police duties and responsibilities.

In view of the public sector's capacity to absorb ever-larger slices of
national wealth, and Howard's political instincts, the Home Office is now
under serious pressure to travel further down the road of
commercialisation. And low crime clear-up rates, poor public relations and
the Police Federation's recent debate over unionisation and the right to
strike all make many on the Tory right view the police service as ripe for
reform.

As with other state services, resource targeting and general efficiency all
give cause for concern. The right argues that while no private business
could survive without comparatively evaluating its costs, performance and
levels of service at every stage, the police have not had to do so.
Because they have operated as a ''public service'' they have not had to
face, like private firms, a constant value-for-money scrutiny.

Given the Government's grave economic problems, especially a sizeable PSBR,
it is not surprising that the Home Office has begun to involve private and
civilian agents in its fight against crime. Strapped for cash and
desperate to improve service quality, its officials have identified
photography, fingerprint examination, road safety, vehicle examination,
driving and physical training instruction, and personnel and patrol-room
duties, as tasks that can be better done by civilians than uniformed
officers. Yesterday's indications from Howard show that he is more
enthusiastic than his predecessors, Kenneth Baker and Kenneth Clarke in
paring down police duties so that officers can concentrate on their ''core
roles'' of crime prevention and detection. Giving civilians the task of
following up domestic burglaries would be a significant step.

Since 1979 the number of civilians doing police jobs has increased by 19
per cent and the private sector has expanded to such an extent that it now
employs more people in its ranks than the police service. However, as with
all innovative movements, there is always a reactionary lobby which
remains hostile to the kinds of change Howard is likely to want to
continue. The sceptical conservatism of the Police Federation and the
Prison Officers' Association is as predictable as the TGWU's opposition to
the privatisation of British Leyland in the mid-1980s. While some in these
interest groups no doubt pray that Group 4's recent problems will sound a
death knell to yet more privatisation, history suggests that they will be
as disappointed with the future as those trades unionists who hoped that
Wandsworth's early problems with contracting out would halt its progress.
The early mistakes were put down to experience, the necessary adjustments
were made and the process went from strength to strength.

Today, across much of former communist central Europe, contracting out and
privatisation are developing in many areas previously thought of as
''un-privatisable'' by most westerners. Of interest to Howard, both Prague
and Bratislava, in the Czech and Slovak republics, have already turned to
private contractors for much of their routine police patrol work, and
private police officers can now be found outside hotels, inside shopping
areas and on the city streets - walking the beats that the feared officers
of socialist repression used to monopolise.

Because the police had such a poor reputation in these countries, people
are delighted to welcome a market approach in which the service managers
are both concerned with value for money and reputation. Ask most citizens
about the men and women from Pinkerton's, the American-owned company, or
the German-trained ''Black Sheriffs'' who patrol parts of Bratislava, and
you will hear nothing but praise. They argue that if a private security
company messes up, it can lose its contract - overnight. Unlike with the
British police, the market provides every incentive to truly ''serve'' the
public.

As most urban areas of Russia and Ukraine descend into a state of rampant
crime, many in central Europe are turning to the market for solutions. It
is noticeable that on the streets of Moscow, the police have, as yet, no
privatised competitors and crime is soaring.

Proposals currently considered by the Home Office - to hire private
security firms to patrol high-crime inner-city housing estates,
contracting out some traffic duties, including motorway surveillance,
putting out to tender security at law courts, and transferring the
registration procedures for aliens to private companies - are rather tame
by international standards.

The more progressive elements of the Tory right are looking to Howard for a
clear signal that he is willing to reap the benefits offered to him by a
more market-based approach. And they point out that overseas, even that
most hard-core of libertarian anti-crime issues, the legalisation of
drugs, seems to be losing its radical edge, and attracting an air of
mainstream respectability, with almost every day that passes.

What many on the right of the party hope will soon emerge from the Home
Office is a unified free market agenda which includes the lifting of drug
prohibition and the extensive use of privately-run police, prison and law
court services. For many now believe it is only the adoption of these
policies which will enable the Conservatives simultaneously to curb rising
crime, control costs and legitimate their claim to be the party of law and
order.

But questions remain. How would private companies interact with other state
police authorities both here and abroad? Would their first loyalty be to
the Crown, as upholders of the Queen's peace, or to their employers?

Although the British public are not, as yet, fully aware of the potential
for the private security industry to take over much of the state's
traditional work, the time is fast approaching when such questions should
be publicly addressed by commentators of all political persuasions.

For whatever he does in his new job, Howard will have to listen carefully
to the descendants of the 19th century Tory backbenchers, who, as the
police were being nationalised by Peel, warned of the potential for
''burdensome expenditure'' and ''poor service quality''. Such rhetoric and
ideas now seem so well-placed to re-enter the law and order debate that
you can almost hear them being murmured on the Government front bench.

Given the soaring crime rate, the huge amounts of extra cash that has been
thrown at the police in recent years, the public's disenchantment with the
service and the poor state of government finances, what else can the Home
Office and its new boss do?