Corporate Investigations: Beyond Notions of Public–Private Relations

• Author: Clarissa Meerts
• DOI: 10.1177/1043986219890202
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• Date: 01 February 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986219890202

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2020, Vol. 36(1) 86 –100

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986219890202

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Article

Corporate Investigations:

Beyond Notions of

Public–Private Relations

Clarissa Meerts1

Abstract

Based on qualitative research primarily carried out in the Netherlands, this article

describes corporate investigations within the private sector in terms of investigators’

operational autonomy, which, in only a minority of cases, involves contact or

cooperation with governmental law enforcement agencies. It is argued that, given this

de facto public–private separation, theoretical concepts within the literature that take

the nation-state as the imagined historical origin and/or continuing partner of corporate

security—concepts such as privatization, responsibilization, or multilateralization—fail

to capture the autonomy of corporate investigations. Furthermore, such concepts

are politically distracting and potentially dangerous for public policy, since they imply

that corporate security is effectively surveilled and supervised by the state within a

framework of public–private cooperation. Nothing could be further from the truth;

indeed the limited liaisons that do occur are initiated by the private sector.

Keywords

private policing, public–private relations, corporate investigations, employee crime,

norm violations

Introduction

In contemporary society, crime control concerns not only the criminal justice system

but also many other government agencies located outside the criminal justice sys-

tem, and private sector companies (Gurinskay & Nalla, 2018; White, 2014). According

to an estimate by The Guardian, in 2017, the number of persons employed in private

1Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Corresponding Author:

Clarissa Meerts, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the

Netherlands.

Email: c.a.meerts@vu.nl

890202CCJXXX10.1177/1043986219890202Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeMeerts

research-article2019