‘The right people to do the right job … ’: Legitimation work of municipal corporate security personnel

Abstract

Corporate security units have emerged in municipal governments across North America. They resemble corporate security units found in private corporations, yet they are publically funded. Presently little is known about how the work of municipal corporate security units differs from that of public police, private contract security, or corporate security in the private sector. Though previous research has examined attitudes of public police toward private contract security, and vice versa, corporate security attitudes have been overlooked, as has how public sector corporate security personnel compare themselves to their counterparts in private corporations. This article extends analyses of ‘legitimation work’ of security and policing agents by examining what MCS personnel claim about public police, private corporate security, and private contract security. We show that MCS personnel claim the public police officers have a different skill set and possess limitations that MCS units overcome; that private corporate security is said to be driven more by a profit motive and is less accountable; and that private contract security agents have less expertise and are of lesser value than MCS personnel. Finally, we explore implications of this study for future research in policing and security.

Keywords

corporate security legitimation work networks private contract security public police

Introduction

Corporate security is often depicted as proactive rather than reactive, and as clandestine instead of transparent. While corporate security is associated with behind-the-scene security teams in corporations (Lund Petersen, 2013; Nalla and Morash, 2002; Ocqueteau, 2011), in the last decade corporate security units have emerged in municipal governments in North America. Municipal corporate security (MCS) units resemble corporate security departments in private corporations but operate in government bureaucracies (see Prenzler and Sarre, 1998: 1–2). MCS units are neither public police services nor private contract security firms. Rather, they are the distinctive result of the transfer of corporate security techniques and protocols from the private to the public sector. These units are only one of several new local actors who have become responsible for urban security provision (also see Carson, 2004; Hughes and Gilling, 2004).

Drawing on a three-year study of the work of MCS staff in Canada (Lippert and Walby, 2012, forthcoming; Walby and Lippert, 2012, 2013) here we examine what MCS employees say about public police, private corporate security, and private contract security. Previous scholarship on public police attitudes toward private contract security and vice versa has provided insights into relations and tensions between the two types of organizations and agents. In particular, it has demonstrated how these agents’ quests for legitimacy are indexed to claims to their professionalism (Michael, 1999; Nalla and Hummer, 1999; Nalla and Hwang, 2006). Yet corporate security staff are neglected in these studies and discussions, including corporate security’s private and public varieties. To overcome this gap, we draw from Thumala et al. (2011) on narratives of private contract security and the ‘legitimation work’ (p. 284) that security staff performs. We investigate how MCS personnel conceive of their legitimacy and how they compare themselves to other workers in the security field. Our analysis of what MCS staff say about the work of public police, private contract security, and private corporate security extends insights into the roles of these actors in security and policing networks, also demonstrating how MCS personnel avoid the ‘tainted trade’ (Thumala et al., 2011) label.

This article is organized into four parts. First we review literature on how public police and private contract security agents conceive of one another. We add to this a focus on corporate security as distinct from public police, from private contract security, and from ‘community safety officers’ in Australia and the United Kingdom. Public police seek legitimacy (Herbert, 2006), as do corporate security and contract private security, and we draw from Thumala et al. (2011) on the ‘legitimation work’ of security personnel to show how MCS staff distinguish themselves from public police, private corporate security, and private security guards. Second, we describe our research procedures. Third, we analyze what MCS employees say about public police, private contract security, and private corporate security. MCS personnel suggest that public police have a skill set different from their own, possessing limitations that MCS units overcome. Further, we show MCS employees’ claims about private corporate security focus on private services being driven by profit as one major difference between their respective work environments. Although contract private security is subject to the same provincial regulatory and licensing laws in the Canadian jurisdictions in which we conducted this research, we also demonstrate that MCS personnel claim that private contract security is of less value and involves less expertise. Finally, we reflect on how this analysis extends discussions of legitimacy and legitimation in the security and policing literature.

Conceptual context and previous research

MCS units are a new and understudied player in the security field. On the origins of MCS units, one respondent noted, ‘around the 70s they started having municipal security sections but those weren’t really what we do today … around 2000 was when it really started to broaden in terms of getting into things like crime prevention and environmental design, looking at centralized monitoring stations, centralized CCTV stations’ (MCS Interview 1). This integrated, centralized approach is modeled on in-house corporate security located in private corporations. MCS units are in-house too. Although funded from municipal coffers, one of the main ‘partners’ of MCS is the US-based American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS). One MCS staff member related that ASIS

… are constantly hosting webinars, workshops. There’s a local chapter for ASIS … that we’re active in. We’re both members. [Redacted] is actually on the executive for a chapter. So we have local training that’s through our local chapter, there’s … tons of events, training events through ASIS. (MCS Interview 7)

The most valuable credential offered by ASIS in both public and private corporate security is the Certified Protection Professional, or CPP. This organization also transfers policy and procedures to MCS units. This means that while MCS units operate locally, they purchase credentials and commodities from other scales of security, such as ASIS and international agencies that market security. Using such resources, MCS units securitize public urban spaces using new locks, surveillance technologies and strategies that target nuisances and risks on municipal property as well as to and by municipal employees.

Given their focus on risk management and local jurisdictions, MCS personnel share features with ‘community safety officers’ in Australia (Cherney, 2004) and the United Kingdom (Gilling and Hughes, 2002; Hughes and Gilling, 2004). However, there are three significant differences between the two relatively new occupations that are crucial to the discussion that follows. First, our research reveals that while development of MCS units in Canadian cities accelerated in the 2000s, it was piecemeal and was nowhere legally mandated by either provincial or national levels of government. In contrast, in the United Kingdom community safety officer positions, though traceable back to a 1991 Home Office report, were fostered by politically driven legislation under the New Labour government (Hughes and Gilling, 2004). Thus, in 1998 local governments were mandated ‘to develop local partnerships with strategies for reducing crime and disorder’ (Gilling and Hughes, 2002: 5). Second, despite the piecemeal development of MCS units in Canada, the related funding and staff positions have been relatively secure, compared with, for example, one time funding arrangements and precarious positions especially associated with Australia’s community safety officers (Cherney, 2004: 119). As described below, MCS officers recognize this occupational security in how they talk about their employment options. Third, and most importantly, MCS personnel and units in Canada have actively embraced a ‘corporate security’ moniker, which is largely absent in Australia and the United Kingdom at the local government level (although it may yet emerge). This strong tether to ‘corporate security’ symbols, expertise, and aspirations is due not only to the fact that municipalities are corporations in Canada, but also due to the strong influence of the private corporate model of security provision promoted by ASIS. Thus, our research shows MCS staff both imagine themselves as public counterparts to security personnel in private corporations that provide security and demonstrate considerable allegiance to ASIS-based credentials and knowledge. Consonant with this corporate security link, ‘community’, ‘safety’, and their coupling are neither dominant signifiers animating MCS practices nor a coherent terrain on which MCS in North America often tread compared to local arrangements in Australia (Cherney, 2004: 116) and the United Kingdom (Hughes and Gilling, 2004: 132). Rather, ‘security’ is the central unifying signifier of MCS programs and practices within municipal government. This third difference is crucial to underscore because it is precisely this self-conception as ‘corporate security’ that justifies our exploration of how these new MCS personnel view and compare themselves with established security and policing agents in their effort to carve out a legitimate space for their work in a crowded local security field. Their desire for legitimacy among local authorities is likely to be sought and satisfied in ways that ‘community safety officers’, who operate in related but different local contexts, would likely not need to pursue. It is the hybrid status of MCS personnel as both corporate and governmental (rather than merely public police, contract private security, or private corporate security) that promises to provide new insights about legitimation work of security and policing personnel.

Presently little is known about what MCS employees say concerning public police or private contract security or relations between these many agencies. Although MCS units are in-house security teams performing asset protection, physical security, personnel security, and employee surveillance, they must interact with public police and private contract security. For instance, MCS units interact with public police when a criminal investigation of an employee is required or when planning major city events on municipal property. MCS staff regularly interact with private contract security guards hired to watch special city events, city squares, or critical municipal infrastructure. Retired police officers often seek employment with MCS units, and private contract security agents occasionally work their way into MCS positions. In addition, there is mobility of corporate security personnel across private and public sectors. Our research reveals MCS managers recruit corporate security personnel from private sector corporate security units because of their unique expertise. Moreover, sometimes MCS personnel later move to the private sector because of higher pay. All these forms of security work intersect, but little research has explored how MCS officials legitimize their existence based on comparisons to key players in the local security field. As we describe below, this requires legitimation work. How MCS employees talk about public police, private corporate security, and private contract security, then, is crucial to understanding relations among these participants in this network.

Previous research on public police attitudes toward private contract security and vice versa provides a backdrop for this study. Shearing et al. (1985) provided one of the first and most in-depth empirical analyses of how public police and private contract security view one another. They found many public police officers claimed contract private security agents were inferior in key respects and were only interested in securing a wage for their work. Public police viewed themselves as higher skilled and better paid compared to low skilled and poorly paid private security guards. Though public police acknowledged contract private security agents could make arrests, public police said they still had the most difficult and skilled tasks to fulfill (such as processing assaults and homicides). Public police officers did reveal there was exchange of information and personnel with private contract security firms that led to collaboration on some issues. Overall, Shearing et al. (1985) found public police trivialized and typically coordinated with contract private security only on an ad hoc basis.

Recent research has elaborated these findings and arguments. For instance, based on a US survey, Nalla and Hummer (1999) found that private contract security agents often view police officers more positively than police officers view contract security staff. The survey revealed too that contract security agents claim police officers view contract security agents more negatively than police officers actually do. Nalla and Hwang (2006) conducted related research in South Korea, where they found police officers and contract security agents have positive views of one another. However, contract security agents see police officers in more positive terms than police officers view them. In a Canadian ethnographic study, Rigakos (2002) documented the ‘wannabe culture’ of contract security guards hired to secure a public housing project and whom desired to become public police officers with whom they regularly worked to make arrests. Based on interviews with contract security staff in the United Kingdom, however, Michael (1999) found these agents did not always highly regard police officers; they indicated that further privatization of security would require public police officers to either become more proactive or become less legitimate. Such claims about legitimacy of these players are the main focus of our study. However, as we elaborate below, we approach legitimacy differently than this previous work. We approach legitimacy from the outset in relation to a security and policing network that comprises more agencies than public police officers and contract security agents who seek a legitimate place therein (also see Shearing and Johnston, 2010). Doing so presumes greater complexity and sets the stage to generate insights not only about relations among new local actors responsible for urban security, but also to provide more nuance about relations between traditional and emergent actors beyond merely negative or positive views.

Negative attitudes toward contract private security agents by public police officers are reinforced through popular cultural depictions of their work. Such depictions of private security may include the inept ‘watchman’, the amoral ‘hired gun’ (Livingstone and Hart, 2003), or the derided ‘mall cop’. Manzo (2006) explored how private contract security staff manage these stereotypes and generally feel about their work. These guards felt their work was more multifaceted than stereotypes suggested and noted that, although they had skills different from public police officers and performed distinct tasks, their work was equally valuable. Manzo (2011: 120) found that

… private security officers are not deluded about their status. They understand and articulate the difference and similarities between themselves and police officers, and express that comparison in ways that are perhaps more detailed and nuanced than has been implied in scholarship on private security.

Manzo’s study illustrates how interviews with security staff can illuminate how status and distinction are invoked in security and policing networks.

Other scholars have mapped conceptual differences between public police officers and private contract security agents. One early conceptualization of their relationship was to suggest the latter is the ‘junior partner’ of the former (Cunningham and Taylor, 1985). Sarre and Prenzler (2000) have since explored the relationship between public police and private contract security agents, and analyzed the conceptual models explaining their relationship. They point out a common distinction, that public police have a duty to serve and protect all citizens equally, whereas private contract security operates based on financial incentives. MCS units are an interesting hybrid since they have no clear profit motive as part of municipal government. But MCS is financially driven insofar as it prevents losses and protects the municipal corporation’s assets. The in-house work of corporate security in government is viewed as protector of the finances of public organizations. Yet little is known about what public sector corporate security personnel claim about public police, private contract security, or private corporate security staff.

Existing literature on private corporate security (Borodzicz and Gibson, 2006; Button and George, 1994; Lund Petersen, 2013; Nalla and Morash, 2002; Ocqueteau, 2011) has examined the formation of expertise and the practices of these personnel. However, existing research has not focused on the legitimation work of corporate security. By reflecting on what MCS personnel say about corporate security work in the private sector, we extend scholarly understandings of this neglected aspect. To explore how MCS staff promote their professional status and legitimacy in security and policing networks, we draw from literature that has examined status and legitimacy from the perspective of contract private security agents and public police officers. Legitimacy ‘reflects the level of confidence and trust people have in … authorities’ (p. 284) and is therefore key to whether there is cooperation among them (Murphy and Cherney, 2012). Our interest here is in legitimation or the process of seeking legitimacy. Thumala et al. (2011) examine narratives of private contract security and kinds of legitimation work, which entails the ‘rituals and claims intended to justify the activities and purposes of the security industry’ (p. 284). Based on interviews with private contract security industry representatives, Thumala et al. (2011) argue that private contract security agents are ambivalent about their service provision and broader worth. These authors emphasize how professionalization is invoked as a ‘neutralization technique’ in private security agents’ talk about their work. To legitimize their role private contract security agents also discuss how they fill gaps that police officers cannot. Appeals to professionalism are not isolated to private security staff. For example, Mulcahy and Ellison (2001) discuss how the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland claimed professionalism to maintain their legitimacy.

Below we draw from the approach of Thumala et al. (2011) to explore what corporate security personnel in the public sector say about public police, private corporate security, and private contract security agents. We treat how MCS staff make these distinctions as legitimation work in which MCS personnel try to rationalize their position relative to others in this network. These ‘acts of ascribing’ (Barker, 2001: 22) comprise the legitimation work of MCS personnel. Following Barker (2001), we are not interested in assessing whether the frames used by MCS staff result in measurable legitimacy for MCS units within their security network. Rather, we analyze how the talk of MCS staff about public police, private security, and private corporate security is a form of legitimation work that MCS personnel do to seek legitimacy within and beyond their security networks.

Research design and methodology

Thirty-six interviews were conducted with MCS managers and staff in 16 cities across Canada with populations greater than 100,000, including three cities of more than one million. Most major Canadian cities were in this sample that included blue collar agricultural, manufacturing, and resource extraction centers, port cities, as well as white-collar capitals and cosmopolitan cultural centers. These interviews were conducted to avoid the tendency in much security governance work to exclusively draw on documents or ‘tidy texts’ (see Stenson, 1999, 2002) that can obscure ‘practice on the ground’ (Cherney, 2004: 118). Prior to these interviews, we conducted freedom of information (FOI) requests to access documents withheld from the public record. The purpose of these FOI requests was to access documents related to security policies that MCS units do not publish on municipal government websites and are otherwise unavailable. The FOI material then facilitated creation of specific probes during interviews and general awareness of the techniques and language of MCS staff. Personal and face-to-face interviews were conducted. We did not question MCS staff directly about how they compare themselves to their counterparts. Rather, this legitimation work appeared naturally within their responses to queries about their employment. Additionally four representatives of private security agencies with whom MCS units contract guard duties were interviewed. The objective here was to understand how MCS units cooperate with private security agencies on the ground and how MCS are positioned in the security industry more generally.

Coding to locate common themes across transcripts occurred in two steps. First, references to differences among MCS units, public police, private security, and private corporate security units were identified. References to specific responsibilities of MCS units were also located. Any comparisons between MCS units and others were coded as legitimation work. Second, open coding was used to identify themes in the aforementioned references. Key themes emerging from open coding included specialization/training, proactive/reactive orientation, and profit motive. Below, we explore these forms of legitimation work.

What MCS staff say about police officers

Among the MCS staff we interviewed, there were consistent claims that the general public conflates the work of public police with that of security experts. However, MCS staff made clear that ‘not every police officer is a security expert’ and ‘police officers are not security experts’ (MCS Interview 7). Rather, MCS units were represented as ‘a different beast, a different philosophy; it’s a different mindset’ (MCS Interview 13). The key distinction made between the mind-set of MCS and that of the public policing is in how each attempts to manage security. The former is said to be driven primarily by a proactive security mind-set (with secondary reactive functions), while it is said that ‘policing a lot of times is very reactive’ (MCS Interview 4). To be sure, proactive work ‘to prevent crime from happening’ (MCS Interview 5) was also attributed to police officers, but this was claimed to be secondary to their law enforcement duty.

Assertions about different mind-sets of MCS personnel and public police in relation to security issues are evident in how MCS staff represent their unique skill sets. MCS personnel remark that, due to the allegedly reactive nature of public policing, former police officers may not be best qualified for MCS work and are said to lack the necessary mind-set and skill set. Prevalent across interviews were suggestions that

[p]olice officers are police officers … There’s a certain level of knowledge that they will have, and … they’re great officers … But not all of them know much about security, if anything … They don’t know what a threat-risk assessment is, they don’t know the bandwidth that is required for a security camera to operate, I mean there’s lots of things that these folks don’t know, that you need to know. So there’s an awful lot that comes with our line of work. (MCS Interview 14)

The work of MCS staff was said to require specialized knowledge of security issues, methods, and technologies that a police officer is noted to be unlikely to gain through a typical policing career. Thus, MCS personnel claimed that ‘you can’t just take a retired police officer off the street for all their skill set and experience and put them into this role and expect them to do well’ (MCS Interview 17). Claims to a unique skill set are also made when MCS staff speak of the learning curve experienced by former police officers who assume MCS positions: ‘It takes a long time for them to get out of their mindset of being a police officer … Not only leaving your head at the door, but dealing with corporate guards, and corporate challenges’ (MCS Interview 15). MCS managers said they look for staff with more diverse backgrounds that provide MCS units with the requisite expertise said to be necessary for the job, including investigative skills, technical knowledge, and client relations.

That MCS staff do not view police officers as security experts and emphasize the difficulties experienced by former police in adapting to MCS work does not mean MCS staff hold a negative view of public police. Rather, here the mantra of ‘the right people to do the right job … ’ (MCS Interview 8) is invoked. The reactive, law enforcement nature of public police work is considered complementary to MCS's proactive approach. That the two complement one another is perhaps best captured in one MCS agent’s medical metaphor:

I often use … the psychiatrist versus the brain surgeon. They’re both working on your head, but in very different ways. And that’s sort of what we do. The police’s main focus is the enforcement of the criminal code. That’s what they exist to do, that’s what they’re there for. As a by-product of that they create a safer more secure community, they do work to do stuff to prevent crime from happening … For us, our major purpose for being is prevention. (MCS Interview 17)

The complementary functions of MCS units and public police services are further detailed in how MCS staff speak of a partnership between MCS personnel and police officers.

The police will … often defer to us on city grounds in terms of ‘how would you like this to be managed?’ Or, ‘what approach do you want to take to this?’ … Certainly when it gets to the enforcement side if it’s crossed over and we’ve said ‘we need your assistance to enforce the Trespass of Property Act’ they’re not going to look to us to see ‘this is how you arrest somebody, this is how you approach it’ but they will watch and talk to us about ‘how are we managing this, how does that work, how does this work?’ Again we have a pretty good relationship so if we know something is going to happen we talk to their special events unit and say ‘here’s what we know, here’s what we’re planning to do, what are you guys planning?’ … We have enough experience now; we have ten years on these things that really it is a rarity for us to have to get involved directly with something … . (MCS Interview 17)

Unlike in security settings where contract private security agents (as the ‘junior partner’) rely more heavily on police officers than officers depend on contract private security staff, MCS staff say their link with police officers is two way and complementary (see also Nalla et al., 2009). MCS personnel claimed they possess specific expertise, and police officers often seek their help. For instance, police were said to request the assistance of MCS personnel when political protests or large crowds gather near City Hall or in municipal parks (MCS Interview 9). Since MCS staff do not wear typical public police or contract security uniforms, MCS personnel claim they can be more successful in liaising with crowds. MCS staff indicated they contact public police when an escort for other municipal personnel including the mayor or a visiting dignitary is required within City Hall or on other municipal properties (MCS Interview 10).

MCS staff representations of public police are a form of legitimation work in two ways. First, MCS work is highlighted as proactive as opposed to reactive. This supports claims that MCS work requires a specific skill set not possessed by public police. Second, MCS staff speak of public police officers as working collaboratively to solve security problems (see Mulcahy and Ellison, 2001). Thus, the legitimation work of MCS staff is achieved through claims that it fills a security function that public police officers do not and are unable to undertake. Instead of claiming to be a ‘junior partner’ and placing themselves below the police in a vertical hierarchy within a network, the legitimation work of MCS staff seeks to level the hierarchy by claiming to be an equal partner alongside police. Aligning themselves with police officers, MCS staff engage in ‘symbolic borrowing’ (Thumula et al., 2011: 294) from the more widely regarded legitimacy of police officers as security providers. In light of MCS personnel claiming to be equal (but different) partners of public police, this symbolic borrowing points to a tension as the MCS quest for legitimacy relies on the common perception that the police are the primary security experts.

What MCS staff say about private corporate security

The key claims distinguishing MCS staff from their counterparts in private sector corporate security relate to profit making (or lack thereof) through discussions of their different working environments. MCS personnel claim to be critical of profit making as the key driver influencing private corporate security work. This profit relates both to the organization’s purse and individual staff ‘profit’ via salaries and bonuses. MCS respondents spoke of how this profit motive in private corporate security settings contributes to personal stresses related to the urgency of work, relationships with colleagues, and work–life balance. One way these claims appear to differentiate municipal and private corporate security is in how each is said to define ‘urgency’. MCS staff claim that private sector urgency is defined as ‘now’ whereas urgency within an MCS unit is ‘a day, two days, three days, four days’ (MCS Interview 14). MCS work is said to be less stressful than private corporate security.

Private sector, I think [means] really tying in stress to the urgency of having things done, when you got to do them, when you had to do them … That really contributed to the stress, because it was so bottom line driven. (MCS Interview 14; emphasis added)

In contrast MCS units are not deemed to be lacking urgency (which no policing or security organization would dare claim), but rather ones that allow staff time to properly plan projects. It is perhaps for this reason that one interviewee viewed their work as more proactive than private sector corporate security.

[I]f you talk loss and prevention in the private sector, you’ll often be talking about putting nametags on t-shirts, or putting little electronic tags on books so that if you walk out it beeps right? That’s not our world, that’s not what we look at. We’re looking more at the how do I make sure this doesn’t happen at all? (MCS Interview 18)

In their ‘world’, which is devoid of the same profit motive found in private corporate security, MCS units are claimed to be able to plan long-term projects instead of focusing on immediate, reactive solutions to security problems facing the organization.

The profit-driven nature of private corporate security is also highlighted in how MCS staff talk about working relationships among colleagues in the unit. Since each employee is competing with others as a ‘private sector salesman’ (MCS Interview 20) in a ‘produce-or-else’ (MCS Interview 23) environment to drive a given company’s profits higher, there is said to be less cooperation among peers. Despite some MCS units having ‘goals and quotas, … it’s not cutthroat’ (MCS Interview 24). Thus, MCS managers speak of how MCS staff are allowed to work cooperatively to achieve organizational goals.

[W]e’re here and trying to do our job and everybody’s got a policy. Let’s go to this guy. He’s got the expertise … Lots of times somebody will pick you up. You don’t feel like doing something. Somebody will pick you up and say the right thing to you. And I know from people here in the private industry that you can’t go to somebody like that because if you’re down, they’re going to kick you down even further because they want to look better. It’s a cutthroat business, where here it’s about helping each other. We all want to pull in the same direction and make a difference. (MCS Interview 26)

Claims about a lack of profit motive as one major difference between MCS and private corporate security units are bolstered by suggestions that MCS personnel are better able to balance home and work life than their private sector counterparts.

I keep focused on the fact that I have a wife and family. I balance. The reason for me being in public sector was always to do with balance; my home life is very important, and family is very important. But I like my job a lot too, so I wanted that balance … This sector offers me a lot more balance in my life. So it lets me pay a lot of attention to home, but lets me also pay a lot of attention to my work. (MCS Interview 14)

Another MCS staff member related:

There’s getting 19 earned days off a year in addition to whatever the vacation entitlement is. I don’t know of anyone in the private industry that does that … family is number one for me. I want to be able to go home at the end of the day and leave this behind until tomorrow … [I]f I can get a Friday off every couple of weeks, I value that … . So it is those little things that keep me … say[ing], ‘you know what, it’s really not that bad’. (MCS Interview 27)

Although MCS staff may claim to be more proactive than their private counterparts, legitimation work here is less about establishing different skill sets (as with public police) than about seeking to distinguish MCS practices from those of private corporate security services. This is achieved through claims that MCS units lack a profit motive. Removing the profit motive allows MCS to distinguish themselves from those who put profit ahead of carefully planned security strategies.

Yet municipal government is also said to be a challenging field in which to work as a security provider. MCS staff assert they are faced with the unique test of working deep inside a government bureaucracy, with limited budgets, with decision makers who do not always prioritize security, and with funds for which they must be publicly accountable: ‘From a budget perspective, who owns that money? Be careful with that money to make sure you’re doing the right things with it’ (MCS Interview 14). Public scrutiny is said to influence how MCS units do their job. This is again opposed to the private sector where the public has little or no influence over security practices. Emphasizing the distinction between private corporate security as ostensibly accountable to a corporations’ bottom line and MCS units as accountable to the public is also legitimation work analogous to the findings of Thumula et al. (2011) that regulation serves to legitimize security (see also White, 2010).

The key differences stated between MCS staff and their counterparts relate to a lack of profit motive in MCS and potential regulation of MCS units through public accountability. Unlike legitimation work based on comparisons to police, this legitimation work is not accomplished by claims that private corporate security services and MCS units fill different roles. Rather, MCS staff locate their work in opposition to private corporate security in terms of motives and levels of oversight. This positions MCS as more legitimate than private corporate security. In doing so, legitimation work here does not serve to level security network hierarchies but rather to insert MCS services into a hierarchy slightly above private corporate security.

What MCS staff say about contract private security

Unlike the public police and private corporate security, whose work (if not their goals and accountability) are both held in relatively high regard by MCS staff, contract private security agents are perceived by MCS staff less favorably. This is consistent with previous research showing that public police sometimes disparage contract private security. Here MCS invokes the stereotype of the distrusted or unskilled security guard as a way of engaging in legitimation work by seeking to portray themselves as more skilled and trustworthy than contract private security guards. While private security staff are still considered ‘the right people to do the right job’, their jobs are claimed to be menial, low level, and requiring few qualifications.

Quite honestly on the odd occasion we find that we’ll have some, and I don’t want to use the term menial, but we’ll have some stuff that it doesn’t make sense to put one of our officers that are higher trained and higher paid [on] … We’ve got a slab of concrete poured. We need someone to sit there in a lawn chair all night. We would then bring in contract security to do something like that. (MCS Interview 5)

Further, private contract security work does not attract the most desirable candidates from a security expertise standpoint, MCS staff report. This is claimed to be due to market conditions and the resulting rate of pay offered for these positions. As one MCS staff member put it:

It’s a terrible situation … if you have a security officer making eight dollars an hour there’s a certain level of quality you’re going to have, and a certain person who will gravitate to the job like that. You might find the odd person who is a student, ‘I just need to do this so I can get through college’ so they’re pretty bright folks and they’re going to do it, but they know full well that’s a stepping-stone. It’s just ‘pay my bills and I’m going off to be a doctor …’ But there are a number of folks out there, for whom that is a plateau for them, and ‘this is where I’m going to be’. I used to know career security guards who were maybe making $13–14 dollars an hour top hand, but they’d been in the job for ten, fifteen years. So you get folks who, and that’s not being derogatory, that’s where they’re at and that’s where they’re comfortable, and they may want to do a wonderful job for you but that’s where they’re going to be. So one of the differentiators is definitely the market conditions, whether private sector is prepared to pay, and not being unionized because the majority of contract security firms aren’t. (MCS Interview 14)

The desire for quality contract security guards said to be necessary for MCS work might also create antagonism between MCS units and private security firms. In seeking to maintain a private security guard service but also desiring to attract higher qualified personnel, MCS management may make demands of private security services that cut into the contracted firms’ profit margin. In the words of one respondent,

I’ve done a number of contracts in the past where I’ve said, ‘listen, I want a security guard to make ten dollars an hour’ and you can decide how you’re going to set your rates as far as I’m concerned, but from an RFP standpoint, they have to make this, which usually pisses them off a little bit, because it could be eating into their margins. Ideally, they want to pay eight bucks an hour, but they want to charge you 15 dollars an hour, so the spread is seven. So, I’m saying ‘you know what, no, I want something better than that … so the spread is down to five, and now I want you to tell me what your profits are going to be’. So that wasn’t always very well received, but … I wanted my staff to get paid well and get paid what I felt was paid properly. (MCS Interview 14)

It is claimed that contract security guard positions may be filled by persons not desiring advancement or who lack the requisite security industry expertise to advance in MCS units. Depicting private security guard positions as temporary or plateau positions serves to distinguish them further from highly motivated, highly trained, and ASIS-certified MCS staff.

In addition to being distinguished from high-ranking MCS staff, private contract security agents are also distinguished from those who hold in-house MCS security guard positions. In-house MCS guards are held in a higher regard than their contract counterparts. It is expected those persons hired as in house will be more qualified than contract security and thus able to handle more duties and responsibilities. In situations requiring less skill

… it’s purely contract and I wouldn’t put an in-house person there. If it’s an event and you have to watch a piece of equipment personally I feel that’s a waste of our resources to sit there and have somebody who’s getting paid a considerable amount more money to watch that piece of equipment and not using their full capacities and whereas contract security guard services is less money and some of them are very used to sitting there and watching a piece of equipment or whatever the case is and happy doing so, I’m happy to have them doing that. (MCS Interview 30)

Though contract private security staff are not highly regarded, MCS personnel claim the quality of these security guards may be changing due to recent increased industry regulation.

[W]ith new regulations for private security out there, I feel a lot more comfortable … prior to having that, I didn’t know really what the person was in that uniform, coming into my facilities, [what their] background was, or whether or not they even had a security clearance check done. So they’re starting to really help the industry raise the standards for security, so that we’re not looked at as the janitorial staff like we may have been 25-30 years ago. (MCS Interview 8)

However, despite new regulations calling for minimum training and performance standards for contract private security, MCS management say they still hesitate to hire these agents. As one MCS manager put it, despite claiming to feel more confident with new regulations he still regarded private security guards as suitable only for lower level positions such as ‘the asset protection piece, guarding overnight tents and stuff like that’. Once again, MCS staff differentiate themselves from contract private security in several ways. Their comparison of MCS staff to security guards is a form of ‘legitimation work’. In contrast to our findings about MCS employees’ claims of a leveled security network in which MCS units and police operate, here MCS staff depict a hierarchal network of security: MCS management and operational staff occupy the top, in-house guards the middle, and contract private security the bottom. A further breakdown of this conflation is exemplified by one MCS manager who spoke of how a development within his municipality had led his unit to be viewed as providing ‘exceptional customer service at the event support capacity [and] not look so much as [a] “security guard'' service' (MCS Interview 31). This legitimation work recognizes the public perceptions of private security and the need for MCS personnel to overcome these negative stereotypes, which is partially why MCS personnel and units in Canada have actively embraced a ‘corporate security’ moniker absent in other locations, at least thus far. That the legitimation work of MCS personnel operates by reinforcing these stereotypes is noteworthy because MCS staff recognize the value provided by private security as ‘the right people to do the right job’.

Discussion and conclusion

We have shown that what MCS staff say about public police, private corporate security personnel, and private contract security agents is a form of ‘legitimation work’ (Thumala et al., 2011: 284). This is achieved as these security personnel rationalize their work and differentiate it from longer standing security counterparts. This legitimation work takes different forms depending on with whom MCS staff compare themselves. MCS staff distinguish themselves from both public police and private contract security agents. For example, MCS staff view the public police as having a distinct skill set (while not claiming that police are superior or inferior to MCS), suggesting that MCS units fill public sector gaps police officers simply cannot address. The difference regarding police appears to be a distinction between proactive (MCS) and reactive (police). While some skills from the police are claimed to be transferable (e.g. investigations), others are not (e.g. program development, risk assessment).¹

Some narratives used to distinguish private contract security guards from MCS staff relate to the widely perceived low quality of contract private security agents, part of the stigma of this ‘tainted trade’ (Thumala et al., 2011). This may be due to the work being unskilled—and hence requiring fewer qualifications—as well as lower pay. One respondent talked about having more confidence with new regulations in place; however, others noted the bare minimum requirements needed for contract private security as opposed to high standards of MCS units. Some MCS staff denigrate contract private security, setting themselves apart as more professional.

We have also provided the first assessment of what corporate security personnel in the public sector say about their counterparts in private corporations. MCS staff are critical of private corporate security because of their driving profit motive as opposed to a goal of greater security. These claims are indexed to comparisons of the pressure and demands in MCS and private corporate security work. MCS personnel compare their experiences in the private sector to the challenges faced in municipal bureaucracies, which are sometimes unconvinced of the corporate security mission and which do not allocate it all the funds it requires. However, being located in municipal government serves to regulate MCS units in a way that private corporate security services are not.

All this legitimation work is perhaps a response to the conventional conflation of corporate security with contract private security, that is, the failure of some outsiders to recognize differences between them. Despite offering a security service, MCS personnel attempt to shed the label of contract security guards to distance themselves from this stigmatized position. In doing so, MCS staff appeal to professionalism to legitimize their work (see Mulcahy and Ellison, 2001). Resonating with earlier findings (see Nalla and Hummer, 1999; Shearing et al., 1985), MCS staff view private contract security as lesser in value and requiring little or no expertise. The distinction between MCS staff and private contract security guards is indexed to claims about levels of training and the tasks undertaken by these groups. Further, MCS units are in principle accountable to the public whereas private security is driven by profit and motivated by individual promotion, which has conventionally been a way that public police differentiate themselves from private contract security. While private contract security work is immensely diverse (see Button, 2007; Prenzler et al., 2008; Stenning, 2000; Stenning and Shearing, 1984; White, 2010), MCS personnel pick the lowest level of security agent with whom to compare (e.g. a guard watching over poured concrete) instead of a more active guard (e.g. a loss prevention officer at a large grocery store). This distancing allows MCS staff to elevate and separate themselves from common perceptions of contract security guards. This kind of legitimation work underscores that corporate security and its industry associations like ASIS do not suffer the degree of reputational problems of contract security firms and agents in the United Kingdom described by Thumala et al. (2011). By embracing a corporate security moniker and its dependence on ASIS affiliation and all that entails, MCS personnel seek to avoid becoming tainted stereotypes.

Our assessment of MCS staff narratives about their activities and positions sheds light on similarities and differences among MCS, public police, and private contract security agents, suggesting several relationships requiring further research. Our findings suggest that although the public police may be held as the exemplar of security provision, other security providers may view themselves as operating on the same level as the public police. Given our findings, the reference to terms like ‘junior partner’ will no longer suffice. It is now more appropriate to consider other security providers such as MCS, private corporate security, and others such as special constables working in private settings (e.g. universities) as key agents in security and policing networks. However, in light of the still marginalized position of contract private security agents relative to public police officers, it is important to further investigate why, if these are sometimes ‘the right people to do the right job’, negative stereotypes about them prevail in the networks in which they work.

Our main focus has been to explore these narratives as legitimation work that MCS staff carry out to rationalize their position in local security and policing networks. Our findings complement Thumala et al.’s (2011) assertions about contract private security work narratives. But we extend their understanding of legitimation work by assuming the existence of security and policing networks that comprise several kinds of security agents rather than only public police and contract private security. MCS employees spontaneously invoke public police, private corporate security, and contract security agents in their legitimation work, and these are agents with whom MCS employees contrast themselves in varied ways. Public police have a different skill set, private corporate security personnel have a different work environment, and contract private security have different capacities to gain or exercise necessary expertise and skills in the first instance. It is through such distinctions that MCS personnel seek to establish their expertise and status for a certain kind of work and thus claim to be ‘the right people to do the right job’.

Footnotes

Notes

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