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Key Text The Impact of Private Policing

Author: M Shaw
Date: 2002
Size: 16 pages

Summary

Despite a peaceful transition to democracy, post apartheid South Africa has experienced a dramatic increase in violent crime. This trend has been met by a rapid increase in private security companies providing services to the suburban middle class. This chapter explores the nature of the private sector boom and its role in achieving justice and security in South Africa.

General economic growth was sluggish in the first years following apartheid, yet the private security sector grew enormously. There are now more than four private security guards for every uniformed officer of the South African police in patrol work. Private firms are increasingly taking on roles previously fulfilled by the police. Some claim that this eases the burden on state services; however, private firms only improve security for those able to pay. As the paying customers are predominantly the white middle classes, private security functions to reinforce the divisions of apartheid.

During apartheid the state encouraged private security so that it could focus stretched resources on other services. The relationship between state police and private security is now changing.

Private firms are gaining independence and expanding their services from their traditional focus on patrolling for crime prevention.
Increasing numbers of private firms are taking on roles traditionally fulfilled by the police. These include armed response to crime and private investigating, allegedly tapping phones and using electronic surveillance.
Some private firms are lobbying for greater powers such as search and arrest. The government is reluctant to accept these demands, but the policy debate continues.
Private firms are accountable to their clients, not to society at large. This may result in better service for paying customers, but there is little incentive to act in the public interest.
Private security is currently regulated internally and is partially successful. However, police reportedly turn a blind eye to assaults, shootings and other human rights violations conducted by private security guards.

The private security boom was a valuable source of employment for those who, after decades of conflict, had few skills to gain other legal employment. Private security has also improved security for the paying suburban communities that have sealed themselves off from the dangerous ‘Africa outside’. However, these positives are outweighed by negative implications:

Reducing crime in affluent suburban communities has displaced it to poorer areas that are least able to afford it.
The middle class is decreasingly reliant on the police and therefore has little incentive to pressurise the government to improve state run services.
Most gravely, those who can afford the benefits of private security are predominantly white and middle class. Those who cannot are predominantly poor and black. This serves to reinforce the barriers of apartheid.
The result is a two-tier system of justice for the white middle class and the black poor. This erodes a fundamental norm of democratic societies – that policing should be uniformly available to all.
It has been argued that the poor will eventually be the greatest beneficiaries, as they will receive better police protection. In reality this is not happening.
It is likely that the police force will become more fragmented and less accountable without structural change. Change needs to focus on local service delivery and allowing all citizens some say about local policing.

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Source: Shaw, M., 2002 'The Impact of Private Policing', in Crime and policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Transforming Under Fire, C Hurst & Co, London pp. 102-118
Author: Mark Shaw , saiiagen@global.co.za
South African Institute of International Affairs, http://www.saiia.org.za/