Policing for industry: the future

When ONE talks about ‘policing for industry’, this inevitably leads to a discussion that centres on ways in which the commercial and industrial sectors might deal with the very real threat they face from crime and disorder in what’s now a dramatically changing policing environment. For the most part, industry feels that it receives an inadequate policing service. With police resources already stretched to breaking point, what might be the alternative options in the real world?

My initial premise is to accept that industry requires – and is paying for – policing and that it feels (rightly or wrongly) that service provision is lacking. There are gaps in traditional policing as it stands today. They can only worsen. Filling those gaps will be crucial, but what you replace the police with must be of a satisfactory quality and not merely a cheap con.

Of course, in the ‘mixed economy’ of policing both the police and the private sector are but two players. There are others. It necessarily follows that the provision of total security to society at large is about finding a suitable balance between all of those players.

Given my long-held belief in regulation of the security industry and my involvement (through leading for the Association of Chief Police Officers) with security inspectorates, it will come as no surprise to you that, in my opinion, a critical constituent of quality safeguards are the developing Security Industry Authority (SIA) and bodies like the National Security Inspectorate (NSI).

The security industry has been in dire need of regulation because of fears surrounding criminal elements and competence levels. Although the SIA will make a rapid and positive impression, anyone using a security company – whether now or in the post-regulation future – needs to be very careful, and thoroughly explore exactly what they’re buying. Whether you like or loathe the police service, issues of probity and professionalism have generally never arisen. They have done so on more than one occasion with regard to the security sector.

An alternative policing service

Let’s pause for a moment’s thought and examine in a little more detail why we need an alternative policing service when we have 140,000 police officers already tramping the streets. Or, as The Daily Mail puts it, “sitting behind desks or reloading speed cameras”. We need a little social history fact to set the scene.

The approach by society to its own social control is now significantly different to what it was a decade ago, or even five years ago. Those informal but nonetheless very effective agents of control like the family unit, the park attendant or the bus conductor have gradually disappeared. Respect per se for those in some sort of authority position has evaporated, or at the very least dramatically lessened. At best, this has led to the stretching and, at worst, the simple destruction of traditional social ties.

Ultimately, we’ve been forced into redefining how people in society interact. That has left some of the more traditional organs of state control – in particular the police – on the sidelines. Perhaps even irrelevant and largely powerless. At the same time, the number of crimes that can be committed (and the opportunities to commit those crimes) have increased beyond all recognition.

However the police service has sought to respond to those changes, an increasing dissatisfaction has developed about its effectiveness as a law enforcement operation. In turn, an alternative policing community has developed over the past decade or so to fill the widening gap. Social control administered in new ways, if you like, without any police intervention whatsoever.

Combine this with lessening political enthusiasm to feed resources into fighting industrial and commercial crime and an occasional cavalier approach – particularly among the retail sector – to present rather than prevent criminal opportunities and one can see how the world has changed. That’s why we need the ‘extended police family’.

Few now deny the growth of the idea behind this, but there’s a lingering and heated debate about who should be the controlling influence of that family. Some practitioners – notably Sir Ian Blair, the deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – feel that the police should be in control, while others (including myself) do not. On the proviso that there are solid working relationships among all concerned and, critically, robustly set and monitored standards within the family.

If the involvement of others in delivering reassurance and confidence becomes a concept ‘owned’ only by the police, it will put some people off from becoming part of the family as they don’t wish to be dictated to or over-regimented. The ‘extended police family’ should be a neutral concept reliant upon real partnerships with anyone who’s competent and has something to bring to the party.

It’s most certainly not in our interests to be part of a sloppy industry supported by inspectorates who appear to adopt liberal – albeit more technically correct – approaches to the achievement of standards simply because they dare not be more robust for fear of losing customers

That family includes, of course, a regulated private security industry. You could go one stage further and suggest that, as far as the security industry is concerned, any inspection body that proves itself to be open (to suggestion), in it for the long haul, selfless and signed up to help the regulator transform the sector should be enlisted as well.

Indeed, as you become increasingly involved with the ‘extended police family’, an inspection body which desperately wants to help transform the industry from an inward-looking and conservative one into an outward-looking, flexible and innovative beast with a high quality, professional approach could be the end user’s guarantee that the security company whose services they buy-in is of the highest standard and – in some instances – a suitable alternative to police assistance.

The commissioning agent role

There’s a further debate going on in the Home Office at present as to whether chief constables – or some other locally-elected person or body, such as a Crime and Disorder Partnership – should actually become commissioning agents in their own right when it boils down to crime and disorder services.

What this seems to suggest is that they’d be responsible for solving local crime and disorder problems by buying-in the solution from a range of approved suppliers. That alone renders a high quality private security industry even more important.

Lacking the sex appeal of burglary or robbery, commercial crime will become one of those problems which demands a tailored solution. The police may be involved less and less in the loop in all but the most serious of circumstances. As stated, many will say that effective police support in the community has been missing for some time. The focus of police effort has been on the domestic rather than the commercial sector mainly due to the politicians’ will.

To be fair to the police service, a non-commercial focus – nay imperative – has been made much keener by a range of performance targets which only reward effort and success in the private and community-based fields. To an extent at least, this corporate disillusionment with the police has been reinforced because expectations about what is possible and what isn’t from the police have lost touch with reality (in terms of policing demand, given the volume and resources available).

One can see the political appeal of this drive to localism as it very much feeds the present administration’s wish to empower local people. There’s little doubt in my mind that if this kind of ‘market approach’ to solving crime and disorder is going to work, whoever is going to provide the service – particularly where the person or agency hails from the private sector – they’ll need to perform to very high, independently-assessed standards.

Reassurance must be evident

If you’re a security buyer and need to replace any service previously provided by the police, you need to have reassurances about what you’re buying equal to the comfort factor – warts and all – that the police service affords you at present. That will only happen if you can be wholly satisfied the standards and values presented to you by a private sector security company are worth more than the paper they’re written on.

The comfort factor for all of this will be realised solely by dint of an inspectorate body which has integrity at its core. The trick will be identifying that body.

For some, there is a downside to an enhanced involvement by private contractors in the ‘extended police family’ and the like, manifesting itself in an increased cost to purchasers of a regulated, improved and much broadened security service.

To be fair to the police service, a non-commercial focus – nay imperative – has been made much keener by a range of performance targets which only reward effort and success in the private and community-based fields

If the service provided by the industry is genuinely going to fill in some of the gaps left by the police – who, it must be remembered, are highly regulated and resultantly have a high cost base to match – it will only be acceptable to those players if raised standards within the sector are a reality. That’s a situation that will not be cheap to realise.

Reassurances will be difficult to harness, but that’s where bodies like the NSI could step in. A body which – while part of the industry it polices, and therefore armed with a fundamental understanding of it – is sufficiently independent in philosophy and leadership that it has a clear and unambiguous approach to the tasks at hand.

Every inspectorate’s skill is to strike the right balance between expediency and principle. As their indirect customers, security sector end users will need to explore with them where they sit on that continuum.

For any existing inspectorates to believe that purely because of past performance they’re in some way the natural choice of partner for the SIA would be to fundamentally misjudge the regulator. The SIA is driven by its determination to make a difference. It wants to see radical thinking and innovative methods. The role of ‘inspectorate of choice’ will have to be earned.

That essential inspectorial defence of standards and probity comes, of course, at a price. A price to the inspectorate in that some of those who would seek accreditation against its independent standards find its operational methods perhaps a little rich for the palate, and instead seek blander options elsewhere.

This is where SMT readers who use security services can help. It’s most certainly not in our interests to be part of a sloppy industry supported by inspectorates who appear to adopt liberal – albeit more technically correct – approaches to the achievement of standards simply because they dare not be more robust for fear of losing customers.

You need to think carefully about whether you should support any inspectorate that takes the easy route. There’s a market place for inspectorates, and you must look carefully at what’s on offer to make sure that your chosen inspectorate shares your values.

Cheapest isn’t always best, and like-for-like comparisons must be made which look at the gloss as well as the genuine level of scrutiny and underpinning inspection philosophy.

A rich and dynamic cocktail

So there you have it. A security industry of 400,000-plus people who could be visible and active in the community, and who are about to be regulated by a very dynamic and demanding regulator. Accreditation bodies working to a comprehensive set of standards aimed at raising the industry game. Politicians who want more for less. Ordinary people who don’t really care how it happens, but desperately desire to feel safer and less threatened.

Not to mention a police service which, for all sorts of understandable reasons, is unable to satisfy public and commercial expectations with respect to service levels.

Something of a rich and dynamic cocktail, then. The knack for industry will be to make sure that whatever security service it buys in is not only SIA approved, but has also been subject to a root and branch examination – and checked out by a really credible inspection body with a proven track record.