The Role of State Laws in the Privatization of Police on Campus

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

In this research article, Vanessa Miller examines the state laws that authorize and govern university police at private institutions of higher education and discusses how the rise and expansion of private campus police forces illustrate the relationship between postsecondary institutions and the carceral state. An increasing number of private universities have established private university police forces, but researchers, community members, and other stakeholders know very little about them or the legal basis for police authority and power. The article examines the legal basis for private university police and how state legislatures have authorized private institutions of higher education to exercise police powers and related carceral practices in allfifty states and the District of Columbia. Miller discusses how twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia authorize private institutions of higher education to employ law enforcement officers under state laws known as private university police statutes, and she identifies eight elements of the broader entanglement of higher education and policing. In Miller’s analysis, she finds a significant increase in the authorization of private campus police forces since 1996, when the last study to collect and analyze private university police statutes was published. Miller’s discussion examines how statutes play a role in the expansion of private campus police forces and the implications for how private, often elite, institutions surveil and police their students and the communities that surround them.

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