New chapter on corporate security in Australia
Dr Ian Warren and Dr Darren Palmer have just published a book chapter ‘Corporate Security, Licensing, and Civil Accountability in the Australian Night-Time Economy’ in the edited book Corporate Security in the 21st Century (K Walby and R Lippert eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
This volume examines the emerging field of corporate security in a range of loss prevention settings, including fraud, national security, shopping malls, university campuses and entertainment precincts. The 13 original chapters comprise original research from Canada, the United States, England and Australia, examining the problematic tensions between state policing and oversight of the corporate security sector, and the economic, cultural and safety issues that underly these tensions.
Warren and Palmer’s chapter draws on a sample of 13 security licensing appeals from New South Wales decided between 2011 and 2013. Their analysis reveals how processes of oversight of the security industry are largely based on inclusion, exclusion or undisclosed ‘criminal intelligence’ rather than improving safety through greater compliance with legislative requirements. The cases described in this chapter illustrate how these inconsistencies have limited potential to reduce violence associated with security activity in the Australian night-time economy. In broader terms the chapter explores the complexities and limits of public licensing and civil compensation as accountability mechanisms.
Clifford Shearing comments on the back cover: ‘This welcome volume revitalizes the domain of security studies by recognizing that corporations across the globe, acting as hugely influential auspices of governance, have been systematically redefining the boundaries of security provision’.
Keven Haggerty adds that ‘both experts and newcomers to this field are bound to learn a tremendous amount from this timely volume’.