NCJ Number
231288
Journal
Criminology and Criminal Jusitce Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2010 Pages: 287-301
Date Published
August 2010
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This article analyzes the evolving security modalities in South Africa in an attempt to expose and contribute empirically to debates on diverse mentalities of private security provision.
Abstract
This article will illustrate, by means of three empirical research examples conducted in South Africa, that private security operating in public spaces simultaneously retains 'traditional' private security mentalities of loss prevention as well as 'traditional' state policing mentalities of crime control and coercion. This adoption of either state or corporate mentalities and technologies is fluid, interchangeable and by no means mutually exclusive, befitting the nature of daily security activities as well as the expectations generated from policing that space. In this way, private security is evolving in its application of diverse policing mentalities in its management and interpretation of public 'space'; in its ability to wield power both symbolically and actually and; in its tendency to adopt a variety of crime control and social ordering techniques. Notes and references (Published Abstract)