Private security discretion: Economic rules, social norms and situational judgement in the night-time economy

Abstract

This article seeks to transform private security discretion from a subject discussed in passing to a substantive area of research. It first draws upon the police discretion literature to construct a socio-economic model of private security discretion. It then uses this model to explore one specific articulation of discretion: the moral discretion of door supervisors as they deal with serious incidents in the night-time economy. It uncovers three distinctive rule–norm–discretion configurations: ‘enabling’ (where economic rules and moral standards line up to facilitate a straightforward mode of moral discretion); ‘constraining’ (where economic rules override countervailing moral standards to prevent a desired mode of moral discretion); and ‘complex’ (where moral standards take precedence over prohibitive economic rules to generate a circuitous mode of moral discretion). Through this analysis, the article offers an original set of categories for studying private security discretion while simultaneously deepening our socio-economic understanding of the market for security.