Introduction.

This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice is the direct product of an international conference on policing and security sponsored by the Law Commission of Canada (LCC) in February 2003. (1) The editors were asked by the LCC to assist in planning sessions and inviting speakers to participate in what has surely become an important watershed in the development of our understanding of the relations between public and private policing in Canada. Members of police boards and services, police unions, and civilian oversight organizations; private security executives; academics; politicians; and policy makers from around the world contributed to a lively and fruitful debate about the future of security provision in both Canada and other nations. Since the conference in Montreal, many of the trends identified by participants and long deliberated by policing researchers have continued to accelerate--business improvement associations hire private security personnel to police public streets, police organizations compete with one another for municipal contracts, private security and forensic firms continue to play a crucial role in high-level investigations, and "high policing" (Brodeur 1983) or "parapolicing" (Rigakos 2002) among private security companies has continued to proliferate. In the wake of security concerns in the...

If you are already a vLex customer, Access Here