The private security industry in Antwerp (1907-1934). A historical-criminological analysis of its modus operandi and growth

Leloup, Pieter

doi:10.4000/chs.1604

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Similar to the UK, localized private security arrangements first emerged in Belgium during the early 20th century -primarily watchmen and guards employed in the maritime, commercial and financial districts of Antwerp and Brussels -with large private security companies such as G4S, Securitas and Seris (formerly Garde Maritime Industrielle et Commerciale) appearing in more recent decades (Leloup, 2015(Leloup, , 2017(Leloup, , 2021. However, owing to the lower number of market opportunities -in part a reflection of the smaller Belgian economy -these companies have not reached the same proportions as their UK counterparts.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning Anglocentrism in plural policing studies: Private security regulation in Belgium and the United Kingdom

Leloup

White

2021

European Journal of Criminology

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Recent Continental European scholarship has identified a problematic Anglocentric bias running through the field of comparative plural policing studies. It has sought to counter this bias by emphasizing a series of divergent plural policing trajectories between the more market-friendly countries in the Anglosphere and the more state-centric countries in Continental Europe. While acknowledging the significance of this corrective, we argue that it tends to overemphasize the levels of divergence between these two regions. We substantiate this claim by examining the rise of the private security industry and its regulation by the state in the UK (representing the Anglosphere) and Belgium (representing Continental Europe). Interpreting historical and contemporary data through Sabatier and Weible’s advocacy coalition framework, which focuses on the cut and thrust of democratic politics, we observe how in both countries this important dimension of the plural policing landscape is characterized not by counterposed market-friendly and state-centric trajectories, but rather by a complex mix of state–market interactions. In other words, the dynamics of private security regulation are more state-centric in the UK and more market-friendly in Belgium than recent Continental European scholarship suggests. Moreover, we illustrate how, under conditions of post-financial crisis austerity, the overarching pattern is, if anything, one of convergence towards a common set of political dynamics. This is an important finding that not only makes an original contribution towards private security regulation scholarship but also encourages us to question the nature of Anglocentric bias within comparative plural policing studies.

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Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning Anglocentrism in plural policing studies: Private security regulation in Belgium and the United Kingdom

Leloup

White

2021

European Journal of Criminology

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“…42 Based on a close examination of Belgian security developments over a longer timeframe, Pieter Leloup has sketched a history replete with multiple policing providers, security markets and ongoing interaction between public and private services and organisations. 43 There is further evidence of the intermingling of public and private security in the case of the United States. Wilbur Miller emphasises the enduring role of private initiativeincluding vigilantism, self-defence, private guarding and investigation, industrial espionage and strikebreaking -in a nation state riven by multiple jurisdictions, within a system of 'diffused state power', in contrast to European state formations.…”

Section: Histories Of Private Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Churchill¹,

Janiewski²,

Leloup³

2020

Private Security and the Modern State

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Customer is king: promoting port policing, supporting hypercommercialism

Eski

2019

Policing and Society

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This ethnography of everyday policing realities in the European ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg presents an understanding of policing spaces where protecting and supporting global commerce dominate (Eski 2016a). In undertaking this research, I participated in the daily activities of 85 participants in Rotterdam (N = 52) and Hamburg (N = 33), consisting of 30 operational port police officers, 31 security officers, 10 customs officers and 14 others involved in port security-related matters (e.g. shipping agents, port authorities, boatmen and maritime engineers). These participants were collectively responsible for protecting the vulnerability of the just-in-time logistics by becoming the intervention, through which they become the very local threat to global commerce itself. In their policing struggles with management, colleagues and multiagency partners, as well as with the maritime business community and dangerous others (Hudson 2009), they are fighting a (silent) fight against having to appear to police for commercialism. However, they merely promote port policing without feeling they actually support the flow of global commerce. Frontline staff that deals with profile-raising port policing and what kind of (resistant) attitudes results from it, may deliver a new (method of studying ethnographically) hope against neoliberal policing, from within.

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The private security industry in Antwerp (1907-1934). A historical-criminological analysis of its modus operandi and growth

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

Questioning Anglocentrism in plural policing studies: Private security regulation in Belgium and the United Kingdom

Questioning Anglocentrism in plural policing studies: Private security regulation in Belgium and the United Kingdom

Introduction

Customer is king: promoting port policing, supporting hypercommercialism

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