The Role of Private Security in Crime Prevention

Abstract

Contemporary security risks have led to the need for additional capacities that would support traditional institutions of formal control, primarily the police. In this context, the private security sector has assumed a significant role, not only in the protection of people and property, but also in proactive measures aimed at crime prevention in various social environments such as public spaces. For a long time, the central place in crime prevention was held by the police as a traditional, specialized subject of formal social control. However, numerous challenges faced by the public sector, including bureaucratization, an increase in crime, limited capacities, the burden of tasks, and high costs, contributed to the expansion of the role of private entities in the protection of people and property, i.e., control of criminal behavior, and led to a process that is often called 'privatization of security' in the literature, in which private entities take over tasks that traditionally belonged to public institutions. The paper starts from the assumption that private security actively contributes to the preservation of public security and investigates its evolving and increasingly complex role in crime prevention. The primary goal of the paper is to point out the significant role of private security in crime prevention, as well as to identify and interpret the key areas through which this role is realized in practice.