Private Security and Its Implications - A North American Perspective (From Policing and Private Security, P 16-44, 1983, A S Rees, ed. See NCJ-93795)

• NCJ Number: 93796
• Author(s): C D Shearing; P C Shenning
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 35 pages
• Sale Source: Australian Institute of Criminology
• Language: English
• Country: Australia

Annotation

This overview of private security in Canada -- its size, organization, policing powers, objectives, and controls -- argues that private security is precipitating a revolution in policing as significant as developments in the 19th century that led to the development of the modern public police.

Abstract

Inhouse security and contract security forces now slightly outnumber the public police in Canada, and a huge and growing industry exists that manufactures and maintains security equipment. This shift from public to private policing also represents a change in the organization of this function, with policing becoming embedded in other functions as opposed to being separate and specialized security persons operating largely in supervisory capacities. Finally, private security has shifted its focus from persons who commit crime to those who breach security regulations, thus expanding the locus of surveillance to the general population. Corporations, mainly multinational ones, control private security and thus raise concerns about the nature of Canadian sovereignty. Although corporations maintain that private police have no more powers than ordinary citizens, observations show that they routinely exercise powers, such as searches and surveillance, that public police would never be permitted to exercise. Private security's sources of authority include the position as legal agents of the property owners, collective bargaining agreements, and private contracts. The law is very fuzzy in this area, and private security powers are rarely challenged. Because private security's most fundamental objective is profit maximization, they are not concerned with crime but loss. This loss notion causes a shift from a moral framework of justice to a more purely instrumental framework of profit. The authors explore the implications of these trends for policing, with attention to why government licensing has been ineffective in regulating private security and promising nongovernmental approaches to ensure accountability. A summary of the discussion following the paper's presentation and five references are appended.