Developments in the Australian Private Security Industry

Abstract

Police necessarily retain the major role in enforcing the law after crimes have been committed and offenders have been apprehended. However, given that public sector policing draws heavily on equipment and personnel services supplied by private providers, and that public police officers have many offenders handed over to them by the private sector, private security could be considered ‘the primary protective resource’ (Pastor 2003, p. 44). Despite this, there is very little information publicly available on the range, size and scope of security industries in Australia and there is no comprehensive study of the growth of these industries, the functions of their different components, how they relate to each other and the effectiveness of different regulatory strategies. This paper reports on current aspects of the security industry in Australia as part of a wider study of these issues more generally.