SECURITY AS A

(SOCIAL) ENVIRONMENT

MICHAEL E. MAROTTA, BS, MA

THE PRIVATE SECTOR

• 3 X the people

• 3 x the capital investment

First noted by reporting in the early 1980s, private security eclipsed public policing in the late 1970s. At its peak in the late 1990s, the ratio was 4-to-1 in California. Post-9/11, Homeland Security, and other public investment slowed the trend.

A never-ending battle…

Perpetrators set the terms of engagement. We do not want the police to be pro-active: that is the definition of a police state. Though operating in a narrower sphere, private security is not bound by the same laws as police. We can be pro-active in preventing losses and harms.

THE WORST SECURITY

They are fine people, morally upright; willing to die to protect you; but for your business needs, they have the wrong information system. Security is not law enforcement. Government attempts to change the past by punishing wrong-doers after the fact to re-establish the balance of justice.

Designed-in not Added-on

Just as businesses forecast sales, inventories, costs, and prices, private security anticipates needs. Even the porous building at left can be hardened without degrading livability. That comes from planning, not reacting.

AUDITABLE CONTROLS

White collar criminals are planfully competent, educated, intelligent, and patient.

Based on research by D. Michael Risinger, Seton Hall University School of Law, and David Moran, University of Michigan School of Law, 20,000 to 50,000 factually innocent people are now imprisoned for felonies less than homicide.

Private security and private adjudication avoid the risk and consequences of wrongful conviction.

• The Hallcrest Report I: Private Security and Police in America by William C. Cunningham and Todd H. Taylor, Butterworth-Heinemann, Boston, 1985.

• ("This publication reports a 30-month descriptive research project performed by Hallcrest Systems, Inc., MacLean, Virginia, under a grant from the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice.")

SECURITY AS A

(SOCIAL) ENVIRONMENT

MICHAEL E. MAROTTA, BS, MA