What is the privatization of policing?

The politics of austerity have deepened market penetration across the UK policing sector, bringing into effect an array of new policing assemblages which cut across the public–private divide like never before and defy simple categorization. However, public discourse has not kept pace with this fast-changing reality, all too often reducing these assemblages into an amorphous singularity–‘privatization’–towards which one is either unambiguously for or against. This article accordingly sets out the analytical tools for developing a more nuanced discourse on the privatization of policing. It first develops a new typology of privatization across five categories: function, formulation of private sphere, trigger of privatization, regulatory influence of the state, and relationship to the ideal-type police monopoly. It then operationalizes this typology using four recent examples of privatization drawn from the UK policing sector. It lastly clarifies how this typology can be used to inform discourse on the privatization of policing.