EN :

This article summarizes the combined results of four branches of research concerning the privatization of policing tasks and the interaction between private agencies and police conducted between 1988 and 1997 in Belgium. The first segment focused on private detectives. A second research segment converged on the evolution of specialized investigations in insurance fraud. A third branch was aimed at the lack of legal protection available to citizens that had been subject to private investigations. The final segment consisted of an analysis of " grey policing". All research segments developed from a certain number of hypothesis and were based exclusively on qualitative research methods. Results from each segment have been assessed alongside established theories.

EN :

This article deals with four themes on private security. First, private security is defined as a protection supplied to organizations targeting the specific needs of any given organization. Second, the expansion of private security is seen as resulting from the convergence between a real demand for security and a superior supply than the one offered by the police. Third, the article deals with questions regarding private security involving private live-Finally, it is argued that the future of private security lies in two trends : (1) technologicial integration and (2) sophisticated planning and problem solving.

EN :

The majority of studies centering on the evolution of private security use a count of agents, agencies, or both as a focus of analysis. This article is concerned with the possible biases and validity problems related to such indicators. An economic framework is, in turn, proposed to study the market and evolution of private security. Trends observed include a decline in the market for guarding and an increase in the private investigation market, with the later, however, continuing to represent only a small share of the overall private security market. It is argued that one cannot conclude on the decline in the overall market for private security because data on expanding and new technologies in the field are lacking.

EN :

Based on the quantitative data derived from the files of various large shopping centers in France, a set of criminal events (i.e. shop-lefting) are analysed. The article meets two concerns : (1) assessing the autonomy of private police via a calculation of the proportion of non-referals of cases to the police and to court and (2) understanding the signification given by private police agents to practices of externalisation of disputes. The key determinant relativising the concept of private policing is the confidence negotiated by the directors of large distribution organizations with public police. In fact, private regulation is not necessarily contradictory with legality, if public actors define their rules on private spaces receiving the public, in matter of policing, after having taken the exact measure of the incidents which affect them.

EN :

The private security industry in Australia, as in many jurisdictions, has been beset by allegations of fraud, abuse of powers and incompetence. These problems are illustrated through trade practices, prosecutions, government inquiries, incident reports and other sources. Causation is analysed in terms of Shapiro's (1987) formulation of the problem of "policing trust". The substantial delegation of responsibility entailed in security work makes it highly vulnerable to exploitation and fraud, and this potential is exacerbated by the inadequate regulation of security services. Mitigation of these problems is suggested though an enhanced partnership approach of government and the security industry to regulatory control, an through an assessment of the benefits of in-house security.

EN :

The community work program is designed for young offenders between the ages of 12 and 17. Participants are allowed to make restitution for their delinquent acts by working a certain number of hours in a neighborhood organization. Aside from this work aspect, the program also aims at arriving at various short-term results that serve as indications of the program's impact on participants. The lack of instruments able to systematically collect data for this purpose led to the creation of the Community Work Evaluation Tool (CWET). Grounded in the objectives of the community work program, the CWET measures the process by which its 13 items were arrived at, its validation and its psychometric properties. The CWET is argued to be a valid tool for evaluating the effects of such a program. These effects fall along four areas: (1) the personal evolution of each participant; (2) the participant's commitment to the completion of the program; (3) relationships between participants; and (4) the participant's attitude and openness toward the community.