NCJ Number
127147
Date Published
1990
Length
364 pages
Annotation
This study profiles the growth and changes in the private security industry over the past two decades, identifies emerging and continuing issues and trends in private security and its relationships with public law enforcement, and presents recommendations and future research goals in the interest of greater cooperation between private security and public police.
Abstract
Research tasks included literature searches, field and focus groups interviews with private security and law enforcement professionals, and analysis of employment and security-market trends. Chapters on economic crime address its pervasiveness and its direct and indirect costs. Other crimes covered include drug abuse, terrorism, and computer crime. Two chapters describe the dimensions and components of protective services and discuss security personnel issues. A comprehensive analysis of the private protective market covers its size, growth, revenues, expenditures, and projections to the year 2000. Two chapters review police and private-security relationships and describe a number of cooperative programs that have recently emerged. Other issues such as privatization, false alarms, "moonlighting," and private adjudication of workplace crime are also considered. Recommendations include improvement in private security's crime and loss control capability; greater cooperation between law enforcement and private security; a better understanding of the market for security products and services; and expanded knowledge about economic crimes, private justice systems, privatization, and other public and private security issues. 56-item bibliography and subject index