Recent announcements over the increased privatisation of Britain’s police forces come as no surprise. Across the board, the public and private sector have always worked hand in hand (of course not always in harmony), and the police are by no means exempt from this relationship. But regardless of who will wear the uniform in years to come, the police will continue to be what they always have been: the violent enforcers, to the point of murder, of this imposed Capitalist society that serves only to protect the ruling class.

Stories began to hit the headlines in March when West Midlands and Surrey police made open to those interested a £1.5 billion contract to run a wide range of roles within the police force, including investigating crimes, detaining suspects and managing “high-risk offenders”. Delegates from sixty-four private security companies attended the “bidders conference” in a supposed attempt to cut-back on the expenditure in security services by shifting significant costs into the private sector. Whilst these plans are now being put on hold until after the Olympics, due to the forces required for London’s military occupation, West Midlands and Surrey forces will continue their engagement with private firms in the autumn.

Steps into privatisation are by no means a recent advancement. Private security firms have been taking an active role in policing for quite some time. Five years ago Lancashire Constabulary embarked on the process of introducing “Civilian Detention Officers”, provided by G4 Security (G4S), into their custody sites, and in April 2010 the two parties signed an eight-year contract for G4S to manage and maintain the entirety of their custody sites. G4S also have contracts with South Wales and Staffordshire police, providing services such as “Street to Suite”, in which they transport arrested individuals to custody; searching, fingerprinting and photographing of detainees; drug-testing and forensic sampling; as well as visual identification of suspects.

As “the world’s leading international security solutions group”, G4S have been plagued with scandal on a number of occasions. In autumn 2010 they came under criminal investigation over the death of an Angolan man suffocated by three of their employees during a deportation flight, and public outcry raged when an Aboriginal man died in similar circumstances the following year in Australia. None the less, the company was still awarded a $70 million (£45 million) five-year prisoner transport contract in Victoria, Australia. In September 2011 they had over £650 million in government contracts in Britain, £82 million of which came from the immigration authority.

Of course G4S are not the only company involved in this and similar security relationships between the public and private sector. Other significant names including Serco provide a variety of repressive services such as electronic tagging devices, managing young offender’s institutes, as well as lucrative contracts with the government for military systems with the Royal Air Force and British Navy. In a world where life is deemed as trivial in comparison with money, imprisonment and murder are nothing but whispers on the breeze.

As to be expected, the government claims these steps into increased privatisation are due to the necessary austerity measures they are having to impose, albeit thanks to a deified ‘global crisis’ of the economic system they enforce and protect. Every day the media demands that we tighten our belts; that we must accept the further intrusions into our lives as a necessary sacrifice in protection of ‘our’ economy. But of course these are nothing but statements of distraction, for austerity measures are nothing but the protection of Capitalist wealth.

The transferal of some police roles to the private sector come with obvious economic advantages for the government. The nature of commerce is that interested companies make competitive offers combining quality of services with the cost of providing them. Whilst currently, in most parts of Britain, funding for police forces relies mainly on Council Tax contributions and grants from the Home Office, a shift in control to a private company (or group of) would have years of financial accumulation behind it. With greater capital available to them, a private company can offer more efficient services for a lower price. But a shift to the private sector also comes with strategic advantages for the police, in that a private company is in no way accountable to public grievances (but of course the police never have been in reality).

As highlighted above, companies such as G4S are notorious for their ruthless brutality, and the already violent treatment of arrested individuals will only worsen under their control. But this is all by the by, for we have no interest in protecting the police as they stand, in fact the opposite is our intention. Regardless of whether the enforcers of state power come from the private or public sector, they will always be those walking our streets, raiding our houses, harassing and assaulting our loved ones, and, along with their colleagues in the law courts and prisons, threatening and ensuring the incarceration of all those who refuse to accept society’s standards.

Rather than having a critique of the increased privatisation of the police, it is essential to push forward with a coherent assault on the police as the street-level arm of daily state-sanctioned violence. Their role is to protect the property owners, bosses and corporate interests that ensure and maintain a luxurious life for the ruling minority. They are our social-class enemy, and the violent eruptions against them in the last years (and throughout history) are beautiful steps that must be learnt from in order to move towards the total destruction of them and the society they protect.