The State and the Art

The role of private actors in policing has become a topic in both research and policy, as police forces face budgetary and expertise-related constraints. These challenges are evident in art crime policing, where a lack of prioritisation often means limited resources are allocated for a crime that requires significant expertise to tackle. Cooperating with private actors has been mooted as a solution to this deficit, but empirical research to support this suggestion is scarce.

This book helps fill this gap by examining the interaction between specialist art crime police units and private actors in Belgium, the United Kingdom, and France. Its central questions are whether cooperation already exists in art crime policing, and why, or not. It was found that while limits to police capacity are an important driver for private outreach, several other factors also significantly affect cooperation.

This book is relevant for policy, practice, and research, as it examines a hitherto less discussed topic which is nonetheless urgent as art crime shows little signs of abating.

Richard Van Herzeele completed his PhD, on which this book is based, at Queen Mary University London in 2023. Earlier, he attained a Master of Laws at the KU Leuven, and a Master in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute of Art London. He has previously published on art crime policing and is currently employed at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he researches public-private cooperation against cocaine trafficking and human smuggling in the Port of Rotterdam.