A brief review of Professor Jean-Paul Brodeur's discussion of private security in Chapter 8 of his book, The Policing Web

In this contribution I review Jean-Paul Brodeur's treatment of the subject of private policing in Chapter 8 of his last book, The Policing Web. I argue that his book represents the first serious attempt by a 'mainstream' policing scholar to develop a 'theory of policing' that fully integrates the modern phenomena of private and 'plural' policing, a goal which is nevertheless not fully achieved in the book, for reasons that Brodeur himself explained. I review his discussion of the difficulties of obtaining consensus on the definition of 'private policing'; his emphasis on the importance of evolving security technology, and the implications of this for his 'theory of policing'; and his characterization of private policing as a form of 'high policing'. I argue that his treatment of these issues constitutes a significant contribution to the literature, and challenges us to find ways of filling the remaining gaps in our knowledge and understanding of 'private policing' in the 21st Century.