Private security guards policing public space: using soft power in place of legal authority

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Kammersgaard
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Security Guards

scholarly journals People Watching People Watchers: 'The Law Enforcement Company' for watching over those who come to see and be seen on the 'Urban Beach'

2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Mann
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
Times Square ◽  
The Public ◽  
Security Guards ◽  
Public Square ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Law

This article presents my own personal narrative, in the existemology of a new but mostly deserted 'urban beach' right at downtown Toronto's epicenter. The new public space called 'Dundas Square', designed as 'Times Square North', forms Toronto's new civic center, around an urban beach theme with waterplay fountains, that rise and fall continuously, to create a beautiful and restful atmosphere of pounding surf. The space is policed by Intelligarde-International, which describes itself as 'The Law Enforcement Company'. The use of private security guards in an allegedly public space creates some unique problems in accountability and reciprocity in visibility. Unlike the lifeguards of a traditional beach, who are themselves young, playful, and part of the swimming community, Intelligarde alienates itself from the community through an authoritarian desire to be free of accountability. Citizens who go to the urbeach to see and be seen, can be thought of as 'people watching people'. But unlike lifeguards at a traditional beach, who often help novice swimmers be comfortable in the water, Intelligardes are 'people watching people watchers' from a distance. The problem of private security in public space is twofold: (1) a private 'law enforcement company' is not subject to the same checks and balances as public lifeguards; (2) the double entendre of the words 'private security' is fulfilled. Not only is law enforcement of life in the public square privatized, but also the security guards enjoy a privacy (i.e. lack of accountability) that their 'citizens' (the surveilled) do not. This article describes my attempts at using "Times Square North" for its intended purpose, and the resulting problems that point to a need for participatory equiveillance.

Private Security in Nairobi, Kenya: Securitized Landscapes, Crosscurrents, and New Forms of Sociality

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Dobson
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Security Guards ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Anthropological Literature ◽  
The City

Abstract:This article documents some of the forms of sociality engendered by the massive and growing presence of private security guards around Nairobi, Kenya. A focus on violence and the logic of an ideal of the use of violence in critical security studies literature obfuscates these networks in a similar way to idealizations of public space and the public sphere in anthropological literature on private security and residential enclaves. By looking at the close ties guards maintain with their homes in rural areas of Nairobi and the associations they make with people such as hawkers, it becomes clear that their presence in the city is creating new sets of valuations and obligations all the time. These forms of sociality are not galvanized by the threat of violence that the guards evoke; rather, they are engendered alongside and at cross-currents to the idealized, securitized landscape.

Effects of The Work Ethic in Private SECURITY Guards on Job Attitude and Job Immersion are Investigated

J-Institute ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-29
Author(s):  
Kyoungwook Ha ◽  
◽  
Kyungwhan Ka ◽  
Jeongha Kim ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Work Ethic ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Security Guards ◽  
Job Attitude

The Private Eye of Public Life: Surveillance, Security, and Urban Governance in the City of Toronto

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Carter
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Governance Model ◽  
Private Policing

Market forces increasingly drive the development of urban space in globalized cities. Following deindustrialization, some municipalities have become dependent upon tax revenues derived from office towers. City managers and officer tower developers work under the pressure of competition to ensure their spaces are attractive to this highly mobile work force; safety and security are key selling points. In Toronto, large sections of urban space have been privatized and are policed by private security. Much of the privately owned space is designed to be publicly accessible, creating new dynamics between private security and public police. Changes to federal and provincial legislation, combined with a rapid expansion in the deployment of private security guards, signal an emerging urban governance model that supports private-public partnerships in policing. Under the supervision of David Murakami Wood, I conducted interviews with high-ranking politicians, security professionals, and social services executives in Toronto. These interviews revealed concerns about the erosion of public space, the treatment of marginalized populations, and inadequate private security regulations. Some argue the legal rights of private property owners permit security and surveillance practices that violate democratic values. Clearly, there is tension between the market forces that inform private policing, and the civic accountability of public police forces that remains unresolved. My research suggests new legislation is required to ensure this emerging urban governance model, which features private policing, preserves the democratic rights and freedoms of all citizens.

Private Security Guards

2015 ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Joakim Berndtsson ◽  
Maria Stern
Keyword(s):  
Private Security ◽  
Security Guards

scholarly journals Ethnic Minority Youths’ Encounters With Private Security Guards: Unwelcome in the City Space

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-143
Author(s):  
Elsa Saarikkomäki ◽  
Anne Alvesalo-Kuusi
Keyword(s):  
Procedural Justice ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Security Guards ◽  
City Space ◽  
The City ◽  
Being Moved ◽  
Net Widening

An increasing amount of literature is suggesting that ethnic minorities perceive their relations with the police as negative and procedurally unjust. There is, however, a distinctive lack of research on the relations between ethnic minorities and private security agents. This study uses the qualitative interviews of 30 ethnic minority youths living in Finland to explore their interactions with security guards. The findings suggest that perceptions of discrimination, suspicion, being moved on, and exclusion from city space were common. The study advances the theorizations of the changes in policing and procedural justice and incorporates these into the discussions on policing the city space. It argues that net-widening of policing means that city spaces are becoming more unwelcoming for ethnic minority youths in particular, limiting their opportunities to use city spaces.

scholarly journals Expanding the Thin Blue Line: Resident Patrols and Private Security in Late Twentieth-Century New York

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
Benjamin Holtzman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Private Security ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Blue Line ◽  
Cooperative Relationship ◽  
Private Actors

In the late 1960s and 1970s, New York City experienced escalating crime alongside residents’ growing frustration with the inability of municipal officials and the police to curtail it. These forces led a range of New Yorkers, from those in low-income neighborhoods to those in business districts, to sidestep the police and reimagine their responses to crime. Increasingly, everyday residents formed neighborhood patrols and hired guards, while businesses and institutions employed private security forces. These developments forged a new role for private actors in the patrolling of city streets. Over time, as resident patrols waned and as security guards proliferated, the private sector gained significant new capacities to surveil and police public space. Additionally, by formalizing a cooperative relationship with private security forces, the New York police and municipal authorities captured these private resources for the expansion of the carceral state.

Guarding the Body

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-72
Author(s):  
Erika Robb Larkins
Keyword(s):  
Lower Class ◽  
Private Security ◽  
The Body ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Basic Training ◽  
Security Guards ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Security Industry ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Private Security Industry

Drawing on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the private security industry, this article focuses on the training of low-level guards, examining the centrality of the body and embodied experience to their work in hospitality settings. In a racially stratified society in which lower-class, dark-skinned bodies are oft en equated with poverty and criminality, security guards are required to perform an image of upstanding, respectable, law-abiding citizens in order to do their jobs protecting corporate property. Guards learn techniques of body management at security schools as part of their basic training. They also learn how to subdue the bodies of others, including those of white elites, who represent a constant challenge to their authority. Working from my own experiences as a student in private security schools, I argue for the relevance of an understanding of the body and its significations to private security work.

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