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Public Police and Private Security - Impact of Blurred
Boundaries on Accountability ‘Gap’
Public safety and security are understood to be the responsibility of the state to its citizens as a ‘social right’ agreed between the government and its citizens, (Kempa,
Carrier, Wood, and Shearing, 1999) enforced through policing, establishing a line of accountability between the publicly funded police and their citizens, providing services on a non-profit basis, (Department of Criminology, 2009/2010). Bayley and Shearing,
(1996) describe public policing as government ‘monopoly’ which in recent times has inevitably undergone restructuring enabling private security to blossom. Significantly, the boundaries between the roles of the public police and private security have become less clear in recent years, despite the varying degrees to which the private security and the public police are regulated, creating accountability gap between the ‘highly regulated’ public police and the ‘barely regulated’ private security.
Johnston, (1999) describes the term ‘policing’ as a ‘social function’ while the term
‘police’ refers to agents. According to Johnston, (1999) policing is a form of social control. As many aspects of life can be influenced by a social control, Cohen, (1985, as cited in Innes, 2003:13; Johnston, 1999) defines social control in the context of policing as organised (societal) response to deviant behaviour. Reiner (1997, as cited in Johnston,
1999) describes policing as surveillance and threat of punishment or sanction. This role is usually carried out by agents funded by the state known as the public police along side other agents which may either be privately funded or unpaid volunteers known as private security (Bayley and Shearing, 1996), all accountable to the law and citizens.
The private security industry is broad and comprises of