Week 8 Post Class Blog

Public Authority and the Control of Violence

In class this week, we delved into the question of whether or not private security undermines public authority.  The Abramson and Williams paper argues that it does not.  My personal experience with private security in the military persuades me otherwise.  The key piece of information that runs throughout the Abramson paper is that the explosive growth and use of privates security companies (PSCs) has become a crucial and often helpful method of states protecting their assets and citizens; their examples of Sierra Leone and Nigeria are powerful, but raise more questions that answers with me.  While I see certain promise in the development of their ideas and increased research, I’m still a little biased.

As a member of the military, I find it oddly disturbing to see someone guarding my installation that is not wearing the same uniform as me.  Granted, they are well trained and their presence allows more service members the opportunity to focus on their unit’s mission.  But still, I can’t help but play out disastrous scenarios in my mind.  It’s my base, why is someone from a different team protecting it?  Yes, there are many reasons for the decision to utilize PSCs as guards at military installations, and I don’t know what all they are, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

Abramson and Williams claim that the state is beginning to interweave PSCs into their systems of power and authority as an augmentation to the already existing public police forces, sometimes out of lack of resources and sometimes to alter the structure of bureaucracy by moving from a “rowing” stance to a “steering” stance.  Their example of the “crises of penal modernism” highlights the importance of PSCs when the demand for protection and enforcement commodities increased exponentially faster than the public sector could supply new workers.  While I see the significance of this, I am still not sure that PSCs working with sovereign states alleviates doubts pertaining to loyalties and execution of duties.

I get it.  There are plenty of nations across the globe that just simply lack the resources, namely capital, to provide their own public security, even if they wanted to.  Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as explained by Abramson, falls into such a category.  PSCs provide options.  And while they may help “enhance the state’s economic and security capacities, this does not mean that they strengthen the state in a broader sense” (Abramson, 15).

I think in order for PSCs to be seen as a non-threat to sovereign states and their claim to public authority and legitimate violence, PSCs will have to be fully integrated as a full-fledged government agency, eliminating the pervading concern that they answer to more than one “master”.  Unfortunately, this will probably never happen; PSCs make entirely too much money to throw it all away and become another bureaucratic office.  So how do we change the perception that private security undermines public authority?  First, PSCs must hold themselves accountable for every task they undertake and make a pledge to honor boundaries put in place by the state.  Second, we as members of the state must make ourselves more knowledgeable and open to the possibility that PSCs are not just mercenaries, but contributing members to the security of all members of the state.