Private Security: Implications for Social Control

Valour for Money? Contested Commodification in the Market for Security

“…For the marginalisation of non-contractual heroism brings into frame two negative consequences The first is that it serves to foster a distortion of personhood (Radin 2001: 93) among the very private security officers on whom the community is depending for the development of social capacity. The second is that it runs the risk of turning communities into isolated neo-feudal enclosures by devaluing the welfare of those individuals who live beyond their borders (Shearing and Stenning 1983). Again, it is only by recognising the multiple contestations implicated within the commodification process that this distinction comes into view.…”

“…Across the globe, rising levels of inequality and fear, the emergence of mass private property and the proliferation of global corporations whose supply chains transcend nation-state borders have stimulated an insatiable demand for protective services delivered by private security officers (Spitzer and Scull 1977;Shearing and Stenning 1983;Loader 1997). In 2017, The Guardian ran a feature story on the £140 billion market for security reporting that private security officers now outnumber police officers in no less than 40 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) (Provost 2017: 20).…”

Policing Communal Spaces: A Reconfiguration of the 'Mass Private Property' Hypothesis

“…In terms of impacts, we know that paid private security tends to sweep marginalized segments of the community out of privileged spaces occupied by the wealthy (Shearing and Stenning 1983;Rigakos and Greener 2000;Hermer et al 2002). The spatial sorting of individuals has also been noted in the context of targeted, disorder-based developments in public policing (Shearing 1999;Fischer 2001;Hermer et al 2002;Ruppert 2002).…”

A fear of coercion and accountability? Security officers and the non-use of force

“…Over the last few decades, this rise in the use of private security has resulted in there being more security officers than police officers across the world (Evans, 2011;Sarre and Prenzler, 1999). In the ever-growing security industry that is primarily market driven, security officers have been granted increasing operational powers from the state (Shearing and Stenning 1983;Van Steden and Sarre, 2007;Zedner, 2009).…”

“…Alpert and Dunham, 2004;Bittner, 1970;Friedrich, 1980;Geller and Toch, 1996;Klahm and Tillyer, 2010;Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993;Worden, 1995), explorations of the use of force by security officers and their accountability specifically are significantly rarer (Button, 2007;Waddington et al, 2006). The use of force by private security officers emanates from citizen powers of arrest, detention and search where some authorities can be considered more powerful than those of police officers (Shearing and Stenning, 1983). The extensive 'toolkit' security officers have 'to secure compliance to their requests [is] based upon 'physical tools', such as uniforms, badges and weapons;…”