New book published on history of private security

Private Security and the Modern State

A new book on the history of private security has been published, featuring the work of several #HCNet members. 

Private Security and the Modern State: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, edited by David Churchill, Dolores Janiewski and Pieter Leloup, is the first international study of the history of private security. Drawing together researchers from criminology, socio-legal studies and history, the book examines multiple forms of 'private security' - including detective agencies, insurance companies, moral campaigners, employers’ associations, paramilitary organizations, self-protection and vigilantism - in Britain, the US, France, Belgium and Germany across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taken together, these studies offer a nuanced assessment of the historical evolution of private security and its fluid, contested and mutually constitutive relationship with state agencies, public policing and the criminal justice system. 

The book is published by Routledge in the 'SOLON Explorations in Crime and Criminal Justice Histories' series. More information is available here: https://www.routledge.com/Private-Security-and-the-Modern-State-Historical-and-Comparative-Perspectives/Churchill-Janiewski-Leloup/p/book/9780367183493

Book cover, copyright Routledge 2020