Co-operation or competition? Perceptions and discourses on the role and function of the private security industry in Belgium

Near the last quarter of the twentieth century, the question of an expanding private security sector in Belgium gained more and more attention among several contemporaries and interested parties. Various commentators, despite showing different professional backgrounds, expressed their worries about the expansion of duties of private security personnel and the alleged shifting of the role and function of the private sector in relation to the public police. This long term changing distribution of security through both state and market providers, deserves further attention. Thus, the main purpose of this draft article is to investigate the different interpretations and perceptions of these commentators concerning the (alleged) blurring of public and private policing functions since the interwar period until 1990. It wishes to critically assess the degree to which the growing security industry was either perceived – in a complementary way – as a partner in crime prevention, or more as a competitor involved in what should be exclusive public policing tasks. Drawing extensively on parliamentary discussions, writings of members of law enforcement bodies, social and legal researchers, and so forth, it provides new findings on twentieth-century perceptions and understandings of a phenomena that seemed, for some, obscure and suspicious.