Today, many challenge the view that private police are not held accountable to the same degree as public police. In most jurisdictions in North America and Europe, there is now formal state regulation of at least some private security em-ployees and organizations. The primary type of regulation is industry self-regulation, which typi-cally seeks to achieve objectives similar to those of formal state regulation, often through similar means. Some countries, such as England, have officially encouraged industry self- regulation as an alternative to formal state regulation of private policing.
