Private Policing and Public Health: A Neglected Relationship

Abstract

Policing, in its various forms and dimensions, has indelible and complex connections to public health. The conventional functions of policing—promoting social order, security, and crime prevention—are animated by many issues easily framed by a public health lens (e.g., forms of violence, mental illnesses, drug abuse, homelessness). Policing with a crime control focus can make public health worse by criminalizing vulnerable people and undermining access to health and harm reduction resources. Conversely, policing with a health focus can help link vulnerable people to treatment and recovery-oriented resources. Recognizing these connections, researchers have largely focused on the public health effects of policing by the public police, and practitioners have worked to transform the public police with population health in mind. This article suggests that although this focus on transforming the public police is necessary to the advancement of public health, it neglects to understand connections between private policing and public health. This conceptual article argues for the need to widen our focus beyond the public police when exploring policing’s relationship to public health. This expanded view, I suggest, is important to discovering the ways in which the health vulnerabilities of people and places may be compromised by different policing mentalities and practices. At the same time, it may provide clues about ways in which policing beyond the police might creatively and virtuously promote public health.

Policing the largest drug market on the eastern seaboard: officer perspectives on enforcement and community safety

“…The connections between policing and public health are “indelible and complex” (Wood, 2020, p. 1), even if “the essential role of brokerage played by police has only recently started to be formally acknowledged by other stakeholders” (Bartkowiak-Théron et al ., 2022, p. 4). Recent work examining calls-for-service data from Philadelphia, PA has revealed this complexity by showing 20% of calls from the public at the intersection of policing and public health result in a substantially different outcome than the original call indicated (Ratcliffe, 2021).…”

Editorial: Levelling up the United Kingdom? A useful mantra but too little substance or delivery?

“…Through primary prevention programmes, policy interventions and advocacy, public health principles provide an effective framework for investigating and understanding the causes and consequences of violence and to prevent violence from occurring. In addition, the police have an indelible and complex link to public health in its various forms and dimensions (Wood, 2020), such as problem-oriented policing (POP), which is not designed as a public health approach, however, in collaboration with partners and problem-solving techniques that focus on prevention within a broader public health framework, these are compatible (Shephard and Sumner, 2017). For instance, the public health model for violence prevention outlined by the World Health Organisation’s Violence Prevention Alliance is highly compatible with POP by seeking to understand problems, their causes and the impact of interventions designed to address them in the long term (Christmas and Srivastava, 2019).…”

Critical workers? Private security, public perceptions and the Covid-19 pandemic

“…Writing just before the pandemic, Wood ( 2020 ) commented that while the relationship between the police and public health is receiving ever more scholarly attention, the connections between private security and public health are best described as ‘neglected’. She goes on to lament this disregard, pointing out that the scattering of pieces which do examine these connections provide important insights as to how this marketplace can variously undermine or improve public health outcomes.…”