Law, Economic Incentives and Public Service Culture

There has been a convergence of private and public policing corporate sectors into a ‘police industry’. In part, this process has involved the successful reshaping of public police management into a corporate executive, such that the private and public security sectors converge in various ways. Ironically the success of the transfer of business principles to the public police has revitalised police unions, giving rise to an assumption that in the face of their opposition, the transfer of business principles to will stall and eventually fail. By contrast, we identify the existence of unionised and non-unionised sectors of policing as a normal feature of modernist industry. By doing so, it appears that in the current environment of labour relations – ironically – this formation may itself contribute to a new wave of business-oriented reforms affecting police associations themselves. ‘While I regard police unions as a disaster for the quality of policing, I have fairly good relations with senior police officers. Their role is in some ways comparable with mine as a private sector CEO. They have reporting relationships to police boards and authorities; they are assigned program goals; they have to devise business plans that are consistent with the goals laid out for them by their governing boards or authorities; they have to operate within a budget; and, they face the hostility of unions who try to restrict their area of managerial discretion.’ Ross McLeod, CEO of the Canadian security company Intelligard (McLeod 2002:75-76)