Private Police: A Note

There are those to whom the question of whether to privatize the nation’s police forces is mere academic whimsy—a question of consequence only to the eggheads and cranks of the Academy, not to those who so solidly inhabit the “real world.” Most of these believe the enforcement of law to be the exclusive province of the state. Such a belief is rooted in an obvious falsehood: the notion that there is a unique and singular commodity called “enforcement of law.” There is, in fact, no such singular commodity.

Volume 14, Number 1 (1999)