Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Based on extensive research in several international contexts, this volume provides a nuanced assessment of the historical evolution of private security and its fluid, contested, and mutually constitutive relationship with state agencies, public policing, and the criminal justice system. This book provides an overview of the history of private security provision in its multiple forms including detective agencies, insurance companies, moral campaigners, employers' associations, paramilitary organisations, self-protection, and vigilantism. It also explores the historical evolution of private policing and security provision in a diverse set of temporal, national and international contexts and compares the interactions between public and private security bodies, structures, strategies, and practices in different countries, cultures, and settings. In doing so, the volume fills the existing gaps in historical knowledge about the emergence of private and public security organisations and provides a more robust understanding of changes in the division of responsibility for security provision, law enforcement, and punishment between public and private institutions. This comprehensive volume will be of great interest to scholars and students of history, criminology, sociology, political science, security studies, policing, criminal justice and law"-- Provided by publisher.