UK Plans Private Police Force 252
An anonymous reader writes "'Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighborhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatization plan,' The Guardian reports. 'The contract is the largest on police privatization so far, with a potential value of £1.5bn over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5bn depending on how many other forces get involved.' A worrying development in a country with an ever-increasing culture of surveillance and intrusive policing."
Well maybe you can cancel the contract? (Score:5, Interesting)
The story lists the tasks that might be taken over by private companies:
The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources
That seems like pretty much the entire job description short of actual Arrest. (The Detaining Suspects bit may mean running the jail, or arrest, its unclear).
The good side of this is you might have more luck suing a corporation than the constabulary. (No clue about UK law here, just a guess). And when the public becomes unsatisfied its much easier for city government to cancel the contract and find a new firm. The new guys will probably be on their best behavior for a few months at least.
Its not unheard of to find private police forces employed by some jurisdictions in the US. And its not unheard of the have entire companies fired. An incident in a Seattle transit hub [securitymanagement.com] eventually lead to fines and term termination of their contract.
off load the pensions (Score:3, Interesting)
Just like every other privatization plan -- the goal is to offload the pension and health care. It won't save any money now, but it limits liability in the future. Often plans like this cost more in the present. If there were sane pension plans offered in the private sector then they couldn't do this -- but the private sector doesn't reward employees for faithful service beyond giving them two kicks in the hind quarters when they get to old (expensive) and are sacked. When private sector workers feel like fodder for businesses it's natural for them to think public sector should be too. Long ago, public sector jobs used to pay less than private sector but the benefits were better --- then somewhere when the public sector had to pick up a significant IT presence they wanted to get talent and had to pay for it. Because IT folks typically work on a short time horizon and retirement benefits didn't matter (moreover, they were sure they could do better than the market, better than the housing market etc because they are arrogant and just smart enough to be stupid) -- so public sector had to compete on salary and now they have to cut the long term benefits to fund the shift. Workers want money now at the expense of benefits later -- privatization is an easier way to that compensation configuration than changing contracts etc.
Re:Fascism (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm so glad Scotland controls it's own Law budget.
One more reason to vote for independence though.
Re:It is a huge problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Look at the positive side (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of catching small time thieves, they could go after the bankers.
One can dream
Odds are that they'd be a direct subsidiary of the same shadowy holding company that the finance company you'd want investigated is. And I'm sure that their commitment to the enforcement of the law would trump concern for shareholder value.
Re:WARNING! SOULSKILL POSTED THIS ARTICLE! (Score:4, Interesting)
In the USA, it requires a significant number of states to agree to the amendment (don't know how many).
I don't know about the UK, but in Sweden, a change to our "constitution" (Grundlag) only requires two successive governments, with an election in between, to approve the change..
In the UK they can just change it. Want to change the house of Lords ... just pass a bill. Want to change to fixed term elections ... just a bill. Want to abolish elections altogether because we all love "mein Führer" ... well our supposed safeguard is that the monarch will refuse consent to the bill ... but promise them a few more powers and who knows.
Really despite them teaching us that we have an unwritten constitution the truth is we haven't got a constitution, and we are always potentially one election away from losing democracy.
Re:Fascism (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day, Medicare payments came out of my income taxes. Then, they set aside a new specific Medicare tax. Then under Bush II, Medicare went private. Now they withhold Medicare premiums from peoples' Social Security checks to pay for private health insurance tarted up to look like Medicare. Back in the day, Medicare's paperwork costs were 2% of every healthcare dollar, while private insurance ran up to 30%. Then they passed HIPPA, the Healthcare Information Portability and Privacy Act, to bring private insurance paperwork practices in line with Medicare and make the data easily transported between the systems. Now that Medicare is private, healthcare costs are soaring, nobody gives a shit about the 'portability' portion of HIPPA, they just fine and/or sue about any percieved breach of the 'privacy' aspects of the act. Paperwork costs under the 'new' Medicare are climbing through the roof and will soon reach that 30% mark. And this is progress?
So now Britain has private police. Do they have private prisons like they do here in the US? How soon until the court system there goes private as well?
Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
Snow Crash! (A science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson; it did a good job forecasting this trend...and satirizing it.)
The Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld [wikipedia.org], also noted the trend toward privatization of state functions in the early nineties. (See for example, the The Transformation of War and the somewhat ponderous The Rise and Decline of the State.) As he predicted, the European-model nation-state continues to decline; as it weakens, it transfers its powers to private entities, and its sovereignty to more nebulous institutions that are not nation-states at all (such as the European Union, NATO, the UN, etc.) This in turn leads to a loss of faith in the nation-state by its citizens, until the state's government is no longer seen as legitimate. Not surprisingly, van Creveld is a fan of Snow Crash.
This has also been happening in the U.S., most prominently during the recent Iraqi Infelicity. As you may remember, the U.S. State Department outsourced its security operations to The Company Formerly Known As "Blackwater" during this time. This led to a fiasco in which a team from said organization—which was "protecting" a State Department delegation—shot up a crowd of harmless civilians with automatic weapons fire from armored vehicles, causing numerous death and mild embarrassment to the U.S. State Department. They should have been much more embarrassed, of course—official heads should have rolled—but such actions no longer have their just consequences. The U.S. Army also worked with TCFKAB and similar organizations with names like Triple Canopy, Executive Outcomes (I think that's defunct, actually), and companies smarter than TCFKAB who don't try to get business through publicizing their names. Of course, TCFKAB is still in business, under another name that I can't at the moment recall, probably because that name was designed to be impossible to remember. In addition to outright combat, other civilian agencies pretty much have taken over the role of providing the U.S. Army's infrastructure, and the entire "re-construction" of Iraq was handled by large corporations in a most unseemly manner.
So why is everyone surprised when the Brits want to outsource a bit of policing?
Re:Great... (Score:3, Interesting)
And now Academi
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204319004577089021757803802.html [wsj.com]
Have a nice day
Re:It is a huge problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called pyramid contracting http://labor.net.au/news/1113193724_8739.html [labor.net.au]. What happens quite simply is company A puts in the lowest bid knowing full well they will never pay out one cent in liabilities, they do this by subcontracting to company B. Company B then arranges all the labour contracts through subsidiary company C. Company C now contracts out upon an individual basis to each and every company that represents each individual employee who must take full liability for all the actions of the individual employees company.
So no training trigger happy thugs are given free licence to go 'individually' bankrupt without affecting the profit of the head company in the slightest.
Now that can even be further manipulated into the corporations advantage. The worst, the most egregious and violent individuals will be reserved for revenge attacks upon the enemies of the corporation (whether direct or temporarily paid to be), they will be let loose upon those enemies to kill, main and brutalise. For which they will be convicted but there are plenty more where they came from and it won't cost the corporation one cent.
Guess who ends up paying, c'mon guess who foots the bill when those individual labour companies go bankrupt on the very first civil suit, your guessed it, the people who let the contracts. Privatisation of profits equals socialisation of losses.