‘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.

Legitimizing Security in the Ivory Tower: Canadian University Corporate Security Services’ Public Quest for Legitimacy

“…Next, the tweets were analyzed to explore how UCS services engage in legitimation work. This analysis was conducted qualitatively and focused on how legitimation work indexes accountability, associations with police, and expertise (Thumala et al ; Walby et al , ), the public good (Côté‐Lussier ; Loader and Walker ; Mulcahy and Ellison ), private ownership rights (Shearing and Stenning ), private regulations (Stenning ), and university organizational constraints (Dupont ; Jacobsen ). Through this analysis, three principal themes emerged.…”

“…This article examined how Canadian UCS services promote their services and interact with others through Twitter and, in doing so, perform legitimation work to shed the stigmatizing labels associated with their services and the broader private security industry. Unlike legitimation work examined in past research, which seeks internal recognition among security professionals and takes place largely out of the public eye (Thumala et al ; Walby et al , ), the legitimation work discussed in this article involved UCS services seeking external recognition from their university communities and doing so in a public manner. That UCS services engage in public legitimation work is perhaps unsurprising given that these services are more highly visible than other corporate security services (Hutchinson and O'Connor ; Walby and Lippert ; White, ).…”

“…Through symbolic borrowing, private/corporate security providers attempt to associate themselves with public police (Thumala et al :291). For example, municipal corporate security personnel's legitimation work involves them positioning themselves as “equal (but different) partners of public police” as they seek legitimacy by relying “on the common perception that the police are the primary security experts” (Walby et al :267). Associating with public police through symbolic borrowing also involves attempts at linking private/corporate security services with conceptions of security as a public good.…”

“…For members of the private security industry, appealing to the notion of security as a public good allows them to downplay the extent to which they may be providing security in the name of private (i.e., economic) interests (White, ). Legitimation work is also indexed to accountability through claims making that focuses on government regulation of private security services (Thumala et al :290–291) and oversight by organizational decision makers (e.g., bureaucrats and politicians; Walby et al :269). A third way that professionalism is invoked is through appeals to expertise.…”

“…The preceding examples demonstrate some of the ways in which UCS services attempted to repair damage to their reputations and others’ views of their legitimacy. Much like the legitimation work undertaken by municipal corporate security personnel that appeals to public accountability (Walby et al ), UCS services lay claim to legitimacy vis‐à‐vis accountability to the “public” they serve (i.e., university community). However, such claims differed in that they seek to build the trust of the university community in the face of perceived damage to UCS services’ legitimacy rather than through appeals to broader accountability that comes from oversight from political masters (e.g., university administration, boards of governors, and senates).…”