The Quiet Revolution: The Nature, Development and General Legal Implications of Private Policing in Canada

Abstract

The post-war years in Canada have witnessed what can fairly be described as a quiet revolution in our country's policing and social control systems. To the general public, the major manifestation of this change has been the transformation of the public police through more sophisticated management techniques and the introduction of elaborate technology. But at the forefront of the changes which are taking place in the arrangements for policing in our society is a phenomenon whose growth has only occasionally received public attention, and has only recently become the subject of serious study by criminologists and others traditionally concerned with developments in policing and social control. This is the phenomenon of private security.