A comparative study of the role of private security officers at multipurpose facilities in England and Wales, South Korea and Slovenia

Abstract

This paper is a comparative study on the role of a private security officer in England and Wales, South Korea and Slovenia. The role of private security officers has become more and more important, and the functions they carry out range from customer service, crime prevention to dealing with anti-social behaviours. There have been numerous studies on the nature and goals of the private security industry, its regulation and growth, relations between police and private security officers, citizen satisfaction with private security officers, etc. However, there have been few that examine the role of private security officers in practice - addressing their daily job in real-life situations. This paper looks at the role of the security officer in England and Wales, South Korea and Slovenia by studying how security officers view their role and what they actually do on a daily basis in shopping malls. Their daily work is also analysed by researchers-observers. This study also compares the roles of the security officers in the three countries and delves into how differences in the roles evolved. In order to analyse these research questions, empirical data from three case studies based on qualitative research is examined. The analysis showed that in England and Wales, most security officers viewed their role as fulfilling security functions. This feeling is even stronger among security officers in Slovenia. However, security officers in South Korea viewed their role to be more customer service-oriented because the on-the-job training was mostly comprised of customer service training. In addition, emphasis on customer service within the work culture and strategy led private security officers in South Korea to view their security obligations to focus on customer service. However, the trend within private security in all three countries is for officers to become multi-functional dealing with site safety, customer care and emergencies. © 2017 Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law. All rights reserved.