Contracting of Control: How do door staff police illicit drugs in the night time economy of the United Kingdom?

Door staff are an under-researched area in criminology and are a notoriously difficult network to recruit for research purposes. In the United Kingdom’s night-time economy, they are the primary policing agents as opposed to the warranted police officers, and previous research on door staff has focused on violence, and their use of force. Following the creation of a statutory regulatory body, the SIA, in 2003 the private security industry as a whole, of which the door supervisors are a key component, has undergone a process of professionalisation which has shifted the role of the door supervisor into a more insecure position within the NTE previously unrecognised in criminology. This thesis presents empirical data from 20 semi-interviews and four periods of overt observations with active door staff at a busy bar in the centre of a large northern town, focusing on how they police drugs and control intoxication within the NTE and what that means for their role as policing agents in the night-time economy. This research is able to demonstrate a shift in the role of the door supervisor from one of machismo to one of vulnerability as a result of various competing interests within the NTE.