We have become familiar with the idea of the health service collapsing towards partial privatisation. Less appreciated is how easily this could happen with policing.

Monday’s Irish News carried a fascinating profile of Legacy Link, a private security firm contracted by retailers to patrol Belfast city centre. The company’s ‘business protection officers’ have no more powers than any other citizen but they are trained as door supervisors, a regulated standard, enabling them to use reasonable force including restraint.

That can be sufficient to deal with nuisance behaviour and minor offending, where many retailers feel the PSNI is too over-stretched to cope.

Tommy Fleming, a Legacy Link client liaison officer, said: “Our guys are always looking for an empathetic approach and more often a simple ‘move on’ is more than enough to tackle that lower-rate crime.”

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This is a neat summary of the principles of policing laid down by Sir Robert Peel two centuries ago. Legacy Link could call its officers Peelers, even if it cannot call them constables.

Town and city centres might seem like a special case and they........

© The Irish News