The establishment of the Business Against Crime Private Security Alignment Initiative, which will see private security companies signing up to assist the SA Police Service by taking charge of crime scenes, identifying and arresting suspects and taking notes of evidence, raises a number of issues.
Not least among these is that South Africa continues to see significant developments in policing in the absence of a coherent development in policy.
The potential force multiplier of the private security industry, along with the many other nodes of security provision and governance, such as neighbourhood watches, has long been recognised and is rapidly being harnessed. Within these developments the Private Security Alignment Initiative is not a new occurrence. Partnerships between police and private security are common, especially in city improvement districts, but have been the subject of some disquiet, given a host of unanswered questions.
The BAC initiative attempts to address one of the obstacles to partnership policing around the lack of training and professionalism of the private security industry. The private security companies will receive training to enable them to properly secure crime scenes without compromising evidence and so work directly under the auspices of the state. Additionally, guards employed in the scheme will be vetted.
One would also anticipate there are now greater efforts under way to develop much-needed national guidelines for the protocols and memoranda of understanding that need to govern the relationships between local police and private security.
Unfortunately the current regulation of the private security industry leaves much to be desired and it is doubtful that these attempts at providing the framework for managing private security activities or promoting acceptable conduct in the context of public policing duties are sufficient.
The Private Security Industry Regulation Act (56 of 2001) establishes a regulatory framework for controlling and managing the industry through the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA). As Anthony Minnaar of Unisa points out, PSIRA's perceived inaction in monitoring what is currently happening in the industry has been cause for concern to many in the industry itself.
Of particular concern in the context of the current partnership initiative is the accountability deficit, largely as a result of the new and increasingly common role played by private security in policing functions. The rapid growth of security service providers and the informal partnerships between them and the SAPS have changed the shape of policing. Policing is no longer the exclusive terrain of the state police. Private security now straddles policing in public and private spaces more than ever before. The state no longer monopolises coercive force either by default or by delegation. Additional resources are welcomed but it also means the systems constructed to oversee the state police and respond to issues such as excessive use of force and misconduct are either not available or ineffective.
While the Internal Complaints Directorate (ICD) mandate, and to a certain extent the mandate of the secretariats, extends over the SAPS, the private security industry largely escapes this scrutiny. PSIRA was established to regulate the industry by ensuring that companies and guards in the industry are registered and that training is accredited.
It does not oversee the actions of individual security industry personnel and even if it were to do so, capacity is limited. For example, only a handful of inspectors serve the 34 000 registered security practitioners in the Western Cape.
More and more private security providers are being used in partnerships with other policing agencies and often participate in actions far beyond the role associated with the industry, such as street patrols and crowd control. The industry has also become increasingly visible on public streets, in shopping malls and as bouncers at places of entertainment and in communities. When this is viewed against a relative vacuum in policy governing the relationship between the private security industry and the state policing, or how the industry is held accountable to upholding the codes of conduct and standards expected from other law enforcement officials, the picture is alarming.
The security companies themselves may take disciplinary action against individual guards, but they cannot be blacklisted and, even if they were, it is virtually impossible for the industry to keep track of them - 25 000 to 30 000 new security officers enter the market every year. These realities raise serious questions over the viability of attempts to vet individual guards assigned to the project.
In brief, some of the oversight challenges include:
The lack of power, resources and capacity of PSIRA.
Ignorance among the public about who to approach to report transgressions.
Legislation ill-suited to increasing specialisations and advances in security activities.
Lack of a civilian oversight body.
Lack of thorough engagement with the use (and abuse) of firearms within the industry.
Lack of engagement with the specific challenges brought about by the creation of partnerships.
In the long term, PSIRA must take on a more human rights approach to the regulation of the industry.
The extent to which private security engages in traditional policing duties and the partnerships it forms with the police need to be better regulated. The parameters and minimum conditions of any service level agreement need to be clearly set out and service level agreements be made available and open to scrutiny.
Bodies like PSIRA need to be capacitated to meet not only an expanded role but to allow them to adequately perform their existing duties.
These realities are upon us now and policy- and law-makers need to engage with this. Among the challenges of the new administration to be sworn in next year will be to bring our safety and security policy and legislation up to speed. The complexities involved require the input of all stakeholders and this dialogue needs to be facilitated in an open and transparent manner. The accountability of a country's security forces is a hallmark of a democracy.
Sean Tait is co-ordinator of the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum and Julie Berg is a lecturer at the Centre of Criminology, Faculty of Law, at the University of Cape Town.
Published on the web by Cape Argus on November 3, 2008.
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