Although service outsourcing has spread throughout Canada’s prisons and jails, into its police, courts, and national security institutions, and along the border in recent decades, the expanding scope and pace of corporate involvement in criminal justice functions has not been closely investigated.

Changing of the Guards provides a comprehensive assessment of privatization and private influence across the twenty-first-century Canadian criminal justice system. It illuminates the many consequences of public–private arrangements for law and policy, transparency, accountability, the administration of justice, equity, and public debate. Within the contexts of policing, sentencing, imprisonment, border control, and national security, the contributors explore crucial questions about legitimacy, policy diffusion, racism, inequality, corruption, and democracy itself.

Changing of the Guards is a long overdue account of the social, political, and historical uniqueness of the Canadian criminal justice field, and the key issues raised by this trenchant analysis are relevant both within and beyond Canada.