Author: Ronald van Steden
ISBN No: 9-054549-53-X
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 182
Publisher: Willan Publishing in the UK
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
To a British reader, private security in the Netherlands sounds similar to the UK’s, judging by a book by a Dutch academic.
Privatising Policing has a dozen chapters but its core is three case studies: Efteling amusement park – a Dutch Alton Towers – Feyenoord football stadium; and a retail centre, Hoog Catharijne. British students taking risk and security courses ought to score highly if they quote from this book to compare here with there. All three cases sound largely like England without hills – stewards versus hooligans; vandals, drug addicts and the homeless taking a retail area downhill; and at the theme park, security staff having to tread the fine line between keeping the park safe and keeping invisible, so as not to bother ‘guests’. Steden ends by saying that the Dutch government has responded quite sluggishly to the need for private security regulation, and ‘the Netherlands may pay lip service to strict legislation scheme for private security guards, but enforcement is weak …’ In his view, the European Union is preoccupied with de-regulation, and he suggests it may lead to industry self-regulation. Labour law, and ‘economic rationalities’ – reducing crime risks – count too. Don’t forget citizens, he pleads.
