CRIME PREVENTION, PARTNERSHIP POLICING AND THE GROWTH OF PRIVATE SECURITY: THE SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE

As with worldwide trends for the private security industry South Africa has also experienced rapid growth in this industry. Additionally among the issues associated and being debated around this growth have typically been about negative perceptions of the private sector industry inter alia: claims of corruption, fraud, incompetence, gross misbehaviour, staff having criminal records and complicity in civil violence. However, there has been very little research (or major inquiries, such as are common with the police) to establish the extent of crime or misconduct within the private security industry, especially in comparison with other occupations. Existing research and published studies do indicate that there are problems, although the magnitude is unclear. A further critique against the private security industry has also centred around perceptions about their replacement of conventional policing where governments have ostensibly allowed these services to run down, i.e. only the wealthy are able to afford their services. However, much of the criticisms of impropriety within the industry too readily blame the whole industry indiscriminately. In addition, some of the accusations are driven by the self-interest of police officers trying to deflect efforts by private security companies to enter their (policing) domain of operations. Part of the criticisms has also dealt at length on the need for regulatory models for the provision of security by private sector companies. Furthermore, a central issue in these debates has also been that of the extent to which private security has impinged on the traditional domains of public policing and the debate has increasingly looked at how private policing can be outsourced as either a public service provider of security or in partnership with local police perform some of the functions of regular policing. In South Africa there have also been ongoing efforts by the authorities to increase the regulation of the industry but this has met with considerable resistance or reluctance from the private industry. One of the problems has been in defining the parameters of powers that can be delegated to private security officers in any crime prevention policing operations. This paper is an examination of various aspects of this debate, in particular the growing infiltration into traditional policing areas of crime prevention, the associated outsourcing of such services, the concept of partnership policing, and traces some of the growth in service provision directly linked to crime prevention as opposed to merely offering a commercial (paid for) private or personal security service.