When David Hanson broke through the window of an M&S in Streatham Hill and nicked 20 bottles of prosecco and £500 worth of steak, he already had 105 convictions, including 33 burglaries. His face, and the entire crime, was caught on shop CCTV. When arrested he immediately admitted to the theft — along with a previous one at the same location — a confession that was caught on a body camera. As he was led away, he was wearing the same clothes he had worn to the earlier burglary.
Cracking a case can’t get much more straightforward than this. But the arrest wasn’t made by the Metropolitan Police, which decided not to investigate when called by the store manager, who had the incriminating footage. Hanson was arrested by private investigators, hired through the company TM Eye. This was the first time a burglar faced a jail sentence following a private prosecution. It’s likely not the last.
Private policing is on the rise, and particularly in London — filling the gaps where the state has retreated. Last year Clapham Junction became one of the latest areas to sign up to TM Eye’s private warden scheme “My Local Bobby”, which runs more than 60 patrols in the capital, mostly in wealthy areas such as Belgravia. The burgeoning industry is built on a quirk of English law — that anyone can make a “citizen’s arrest”. Companies such as TM Eye just add training and costumes. Some of its “local bobbies” have been kitted out in Fifties-style police tunics, designed in consultation with the London School of Fashion, and others wear hi-vis jackets but with old-style caps. The trend for privatisation may be recent but with it comes a dash of nostalgia for the police as they once were.
The idea that richer areas can get access to a higher standard of justice is clearly no justice at all
But plenty also find all this unsettling — and with good reason. What should we make of this creeping privatisation of work usually done by the police?
The idea that big companies and richer neighbourhoods can get access to a higher standard of justice is clearly no justice at all. The unfairness is particularly underlined by cases where poorer communities have decided to invest in private security at the lower end of the market. In 2015, after the closure of a police station in Frinton, a small coastal town in Essex, 300 residents started paying £2 a week to the company AGS for nightly street patrols.
How to deal with it? There has been a tendency, particularly on the Left, to present all this as a moral conundrum for the consumer. Should you “support” the trend by employing one of these companies, or “stick to your principles” and rely on an overstretched public service? “You could made the argument that if [M&S] hadn’t done it, [Hanson] would still be out there burgling,” said the presenter James O’Brien on his LBC show this week.
“But then if you become supportive of [private policing], you reduce the likelihood of the police ever getting back to the sort of capacity it once had. It’s the difference between practical and principle”. But does commissioning a private investigator really erode the capacity of the police? You could more easily argue the opposite: that these companies are actually taking some of the load off overstretched forces, allowing them to concentrate on the poorer communities that most need their help (recent research shows repeat victims are highest in low-income areas).
Part of the reason shoplifting has increased is automation within large stores such as M&S. Is it so bad that they are redirecting their savings on till staff towards private security?
Some argue that supplementing forces with private services will “take the pressure off” the police and government to sort it out. But this misses something. The pressure has been “on” for years. In fact the police have been failing for so long that it is now the norm in which they operate. And the problem remains very much unsorted. Recent figures showed more than 215,000 burglaries went unsolved last year.
The truth is that private policing isn’t the problem — it is merely a symptom. The real problem is the state of the police. The damage wrought by austerity cuts still hangs over the service, which has been badly depleted. A desperate attempt to replace lost police officers has meant a lowering of recruitment standards.
A YouGov poll in November found that 49 per cent of Britons thought the police were doing a good job — down from 77 per cent four years previously. The growth of private policing is just another alarm siren among many. This is a service in need of urgent overhaul.
