Policing and security

In the last four decades, the provision of security in Australia (and indeed across the entire world) has undergone a major transformation. No longer are public police forces the predominant players in the security market, if they ever were. Today these roles are dominated by internationally owned and operated private security firms. Australia now boasts a number of large corporate security businesses that provide a wide variety of services to both public and private instrumentalities acting under regulatory structures that require, for the most part, formal training regimes and pre-entry standards. Together they join with public police to form what has been referred to as a security “quilt.” This chapter will identify the privatization trends in the provision of security services generally and review the legal and regulatory requirements that are designed to allow governments and the public alike to have confidence in the way in which private operators regularly join with public police operations. The chapter offers a critique regarding whether the public/private experiment has been able to offer and supply security services, including cyber security services, that meet the public’s expectations and satisfy the general aims of transparency, accountability, fairness, efficiency, and effectiveness.