The pursuit of security is now central to the development of public policy and a driving force behind the spread of private policing. Just as new theoretical frameworks are needed to deal with the increasing tendency of crime control policies to focus on risk reduction, new forms of governance are also required to deal with the rapid growth of the private security industry. This volume brings together a wide range of contributions from leading scholars in the field and includes international and comparative perspectives on the challenges posed by the rise of the ”security society”.