Levels In The Private Security Industry example essay topic

EMMANUEL SHILLING FORD THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS OF BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC POLICING. IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS BEST UNDERSTOOD AS A COMPETITIVE OR COMPLEMENTARY ONE? Introduction. From early times as soon as man claimed property, others sought to steal it; hence came the need to protect it. To achieve this a number of mechanisms and physical devices were created, and ultimately people employed to police the property... Johnston notes that the word police is derived from the Greek polis which means ^aEUR~the rights of a citizen, .

However it can also be defined as an organized force in a state that maintains law and order. Increasingly, business and property owners are turning to the private security sector to protect their interests. The primary reason for this trend appears to be that the level of criminal activity in the UK is overwhelming the capacity of the pubic police forces to cope with the problem. Private security is not a new phenomenon it existed long before the beginning of the modern police. It is therefore my aim to look at the historical development of both private and public policing and the relationship between the public sector and the private sector. Although the modern period of policing in England began in 1829 with the creation of the ^aEUR~new police, from the implementation of the Metropolitan Police Act 1829.

The origin of British policing can trace its lineage back to the tribal laws and customs of the Danish and Anglo-Saxon invaders (Critchley, 1978). The system of policing had been organised in a variety of ways, some of which were 'private' in the way we would generally use the phrase now, and some of which were quintessentially public, such as the institution of frankpledge. As Critchley put it, arising from Saxon times frankpledge 'relied on the principle that all members of a community accepted an obligation for the good behaviour of each other'. The State provided co-ordination and oversight of this structure of private and community policing arrangements, with individuals and collectivities being penalised on those occasions when 'order' was not maintained. As Shearing has argued, 'within this system rule took place "at a distance" with the Crown doing the "steering and the "rowing" left to communities'.

The system of policing during that time can, very broadly, be defined as private, non-professional and un specialised. Although there were some forces financed by local government, the system is best characterised as a mixed one, in which the community, voluntary, private and public services co-existed, with little evidence of efficiency (Gill and Maw by 1990 a). As concerns over the level of crime began grow, Henry Fielding formed a group of uniformed 'thief-takers' to respond to concerns about rising crime in the capital, this was one of the key developments in the eighteenth century. However, the eighteenth century showed little in the way of development in the criminal justice system.

The parish constable and ^aEUR~watch, systems failed completely and the impotence of the law-enforcement machinery was a serious menace, this paved the way for the implementation of the ^aEUR~ New Police, . The 'modern' period in British policing began in 1829 with the creation of the 'New Police' as a result of the Metropolitan Police Act 1829, which was steered through parliament by Sir Robert Peel. Although the Metropolitan Police was established in 1829, and similar forces in other urban and rural areas between 1835 and 1888, there was considerable local variation. Police volunteers and private forces continued to exist. The forces were not specialist and officers earned extra money by acting as ^aEUR~knockers-ups, , and local authorities, eager to get value for money, deployed its new police in a variety of administrative tasks. The ^aEUR~new police, gradually expanded and became the predominant policing body with the responsibilities for public safety and prevention of crime.

However the ^aEUR~hybrid, and ^aEUR~private, aspects of policing system did not die out but simply became overshadowed. From the mid-nineteenth century, then, a professional state police force not only existed but was accorded a degree of legitimacy that would have been unimaginable a century earlier. The nineteenth century also witnessed the rise of specific police forces in dedicated sectors of industry. These were quasi-public, in the sense that their role and functions were prescribed by legislation through a number of Acts. As England became more industrialised it transformed society from a rural farming society into urban industrial society regulated by the state. During this era social control problems were exacerbated by major shifts of population from the country into the town, this saw acute poverty and unemployment problems.

This caused an upsurge in criminal activity and also an expanded public force to curb the crime situation. The continued growth of the economic surplus in communities has supported large increases in both size and wealth of the elite classes. Much of this new wealth was used to privatize what were formerly public spaces with the construction of stadiums, shopping malls, condominium, arenas and theme parks. These wealthy elites employed their own methods of securing their own property and ensuring their personal safety. The rise in crime in the post-war period has been the fundamental driving force behind the emergence of the modern commercial private security industry. According to South, he saw the industry as comprising those firms providing products and services in guarding, alarms, and mechanical and electronic security equipment.

Through the years private security industry has grown drastically, however, it is very difficult to find reliable evidence about the size of the industry, and the respective importance of the various sectors within it. This uncertainty about the magnitude of the industry stems from a number of causes: the rapidly changing nature of the industry, with high levels of mobility of firms in and out of the market; the relative importance of small and medium sized firms which are difficult to locate; and the naturally less visible nature of some of the activities undertaken. The growth of private policing in the UK and the problems associated with this growth has been well researched by Jones and Newburn (1998) who outline the distinction between public and private policing. Public policing being publicly funded, is in the main staffed by public officials and do not depend for their survival on selling their services for profit. Private security companies are those, which are not funded by the State, whose employees are not public officials and who are financially dependent for their survival on the sale of their services in the marketplace.

Moreover, Jones and Newburn (1998) explain the growth of the private security industry in terms of their ^aEURoeStructural Change^aEUR theory and reject the notion of it being related to a restriction on public expendiditure or the deliberate contracting-out of functions to the private sector, but to the growth of large corporately owned property such as shopping centres, retail parks, large education centres and indeed large scale privately owned residential complexes. The point is made that people are more likely to live, work or spend their leisure time in places protected by private security rather than the public police. Albanese (1986) is in agreement with this view attributing the growth of the industry to factors including shifts in the ownership of private property and the inability of the law enforcement agencies to perform their task of crime prevention and criminal apprehension in a cost effective and economical manner. The security industry in England along with it,'s overseas counterparts, appears to have enjoyed a period of intensive growth.

The ratio of private security employees to public police in Canada is currently reported 2: 1 and there are estimates that this could grow to 3: 1 by the end of the century. While many private security companies no doubt strive for professionalism and quality of service, the fact remains that often the attraction of private security is its low cost to the client. The private security sector is a competitive industry, the lowest bid frequently wins the security contract, as previously stated, the private security sector,'s survival is dependent financially on the sale of their services in the marketplace. An important recent development in Britain has been the awarding of contracts to private companies to run prisons, the first instance being the Wolds Remand Centre on Humberside, this was later followed by Blakenhurst and Doncaster prisons. In June 1994, Securicor won the contract to undertake escort work in the Metropolitan Police District. By the end of 1995, private companies were carrying out prisoner escort work in over half the country.

A number of estimates of total annual turnover of the private security industry have been made over the years. Comparisons over time are confused by the effects of inflation, but a brief review of previous estimates is worthwhile. Randall and Hamilton estimated that the estimates is worthwhile. Randall and Hamilton estimated that the industry had an annual turnover of ^Alb 55 million (Randall and Hamilton 1972). A 1979 Home Office Green Paper suggested an annual turnover in 1976 of ^Alb 135 million (Shearing and Stunning 1981 p. 207). During the 1980's, the marketing consultancy Jordan and Sons published a series of industry surveys, and these suggested total annual sales during the early 1980's in excess of ^Alb 400 million.

The 1989 report suggested that the market size had increased from ^Alb 476.4 million in 1983 to ^Alb 807.6 million in 1987, with the main part of this increase occurring after 1985. The most recent survey suggested that by 1990 the total sales in the industry had grown to ^Alb 1,225.6 million (Jordan and Sons Ltd. 1993). The restricted definition of the private security industry used by Jordan and Sons, and the reliance on figures from public and private limited liability firms only, suggests that this is an underestimate. This competitiveness in the private security sector is not only evident in the United Kingdom but with the overseas counterparts as well. For example, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, at the end of June 1999, there were 1,714 businesses in the security services industry, which employed 31,752 people.

The total income of the industry in 1998-99 was almost $1.4 billion, with an operating profit margin of 6.5%. (web) Although private policing can be considered as complementary to public policing, in the sense that it fills the void in the areas where the public police can, t provide adequate security, for example shopping mall, arena, etc. However, the private security sector is not considered by many to be complementary. The public policing mandate has traditionally involved four major functions: law enforcement, social referral, order maintenance and crime prevention. The problem with considering the use of the security industry for carrying out part or all of these functions is simply that private security and public policing have conflicting mandates, private security having a mandate that only involves the protection of private assets. The Sussex experiment, as it became known, began when because of financial and accountability reasons, the Borough of Sussex in New Jersey elected to abolish the police force and based on the need to provide a constant uniformed presence within the Borough they hired a private security firm Although the intended mandate of the private security was to supplement other State law enforcement agencies it soon changed as the private security officers began acting as a fully independent municipal police Department. Problems arose when reports of people being stopped, residents being detained and arrested were made public.

Reports soon surfaced that security officers were severely mishandling situations and some of them even had minor criminal records themselves resulting in the experiment being stopped. O'Leary (1994) provides a personal legal perspective on where he disagreed with the action taken by the Sussex Borough. His hesitance to accept the privatisation of municipal police services, came not from the concept itself, but rather from the lack of safeguards provided in terms of accountability and qualifications. O, Leary believed the only way privatisation of police services could work is for private security companies to meet the same screening and training criteria as public police departments. Oliver and Wilson (1988), two of the most respected security consultants in the UK, state that security employees should not be considered professional until they are properly trained.

According to these authors the current training arrangements in the UK are minimal, with a majority of companies doing little in terms of training. This view has been reinforced by Post and Kingsbury (1981) who remarked that training levels in the private security industry are extremely varied, with some firms providing no training. Conclusion The development of the private security sector over the decade signals the ^aEURoerebirth of private policing. ^aEUR An overview in terms of international literature suggests that the private security industry is growing and will continue to grow substantially and will continue to be competitive in the next decade. The implications of this trend for society in general and the public police in particular are not yet known but it will have a profound effect.

While no one doubts that the private security industry should have a role in society the general difficulty is that it is not publicly accountable and therefore not subject to the same kind of public scrutiny as the public police. Moreover, there is a suggestion that the industry has a grave image problem, is not adequately trained and generally lacks professionalism.