This paper focuses upon the emergence of the night-time economy both materially and culturally as a powerful manifestation of post-industrial society. This emergence features two key processes: firstly a shift in economic development from the industrial to the post-industrial; secondly a significant orientation of urban governance involving a move away from the traditional managerial functions of local service provision, towards an entrepreneurial stance primarily focused on the facilitation of economic growth. Central to this new economic era is the identification and promotion of liminality. The State's apparent inability to control these new leisure zones constitutes the creation of an urban frontier that is governed by commercial imperatives.

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This paper, based on ethnographic research, is concerned with the accountability of licensed premise door staff -better known as 'bouncers'. 2 The situational dynamics of the bouncer's enacted environment ensures that theirs is a role consistently exposed to the interactions of violence. As such, allegations of assault, both upon and by door staff, are common. This paper reports upon incidents of door staff violence and why they often fail to be investigated and, when they are investigated, why they frequently fail to be successfully prosecuted at court. In doing so, the paper highlights the adopted attitudes and procedural methods employed by both bouncers and police officers, which have a detrimental impact upon the deterrent function of the criminal law. The paper ends by offering some policy prescriptions to local police managers, suggesting that the state police become more (pro)actively involved in overseeing the provision of this expanding sector of the private security industry. 1 The authors would like to thank Paul Broadbent as well as two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. 2 Throughout our research we use the terms 'bouncers' and 'door staff interchangeably, whilst the latter is perhaps more acceptable to those in the trade, the former is more historically grounded as a commonly recognised UK colloquialism. 383

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