Lesson 1: Introduction

Security is a basic need for human beings, a rung on the ladder of Maslow’s hierarchy of need. This course is designed to be an introductory, overview course about an industry that is extremely complex and rapidly changing. It is not meant to make you an expert in the filed but to make you aware of many of the sectors and operations that make up the industry.

It should become rapidly apparent to you that there is no easy answer to the question, "What is security?" It is the intent of this course to stimulate you to seek out appropriate opportunities, related activities, and solutions for teamwork among those in the private and pubic sector. The source of the material used in this course is Private Security in America, An Introduction, Clifford E. Simonsen.

Section 1: Introduction

The development of social groups and societies has required some means to provide control over behavior that is too far out on the proscribed end of the continuum of behavior. Early attempts at codification of behavior resulted bureaucratic nightmares to administer. The means for enforcement of societal rules and laws have rested in the individual, the social group, the leadership of emerging nation-sates, the military, public police agencies, and attempts at private security.

Security has always been provided in some form for our social structures, from early tribal groups to modern nation-states. Although public safety organizations (police and fire) developed along a parallel track with private security, they were often at odds with one another. Only in more recent times have they begun to try to work together in a synergistic fashion. The three areas of security provision are seen as the military, public safety, and private security, each with a separate but overlapping role. Private security has become such a critical part of the protection and enforcement team that it now far outnumbers its public sector counterpart.

The popular myth is that criminal justice in America is a monolithic, consistent structure that comprises totally synchronized agencies responding to crime in an interdependent and interrelated manner. In fact, the criminal justice system is not a single system but rather many separate systems and subsystems of institutions and procedures that re often poorly articulated ad seldom meaningfully interrelated.

Security today is a sophisticated and complex industry that defies a simple definition. The efforts of "security" are major factors for helping the public sector agencies in the criminal justice system to reduce crime. To paraphrase the writer and street philosopher Studs Terkel, "A society that does not know it past cannot understand its present, nor shape it future." In this case, the future seems bright for the private security discipline, if those who control its destiny can learn from the successes and failures in the past.

Private security has had a difficult time overcoming the "guard" label, the one that evokes the image of an elderly, retired person with a time clock key and a big rusty gun. Security today is a sophisticated and complex industry that defies simple definition. The National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice in America defines the term private security as, "individual and organizational measures and efforts that provide protection for persons and property. It also describes business enterprises that provide services and products to achieve protection."