Corporatizing security through champions, condos and credentials
| Author | Randy K Lippert,Kevin Walby |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865818781191 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Corporatizing security
through champions,
condos and credentials
Randy K Lippert
University of Windsor, Canada
Kevin Walby
University of Winnipeg, Canada
Abstract
This paper argues that corporatization of security is distinct from related phenomena includ-
ing commodification, privatization, and marketization. Corporatization refers to the spread
of the corporate form and therefore to organization and governance, not ownership, and as
corporatization expands in the security domain it raises troubling issues due to its secretive
and undemocratic features. Corporatization’s conceptual purchase and these issues are
shown through exploration of emergent security arrangements in three under-researched,
disparate realms with growing global presence: public police sponsorship, private residential
urban security, and public corporate security. These revealing realms of security corporat-
ization are established and enhanced by specific techniques and organizational forms,
including champions, condominiums, and credentials, respectively. The paper concludes
with discussion of implications of corporatization of security for scholarly methods of inquiry
and critique as well as for increasing accountability.
Keywords
Condominiums, corporatization, credentials, foundations, policing, security
Date received: 30 January 2018; accepted: 14 May 2018
Corresponding author:
Kevin Walby, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada.
Email: k.walby@uwinnipeg.ca
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2019, Vol. 52(2) 193–212
!The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865818781191
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Introduction
In North America and elsewhere, public police agencies are increasingly receiving corpo-
rate sponsorship from and through special organizations adopting a corporate form. In
cities across the globe, residential housing is assuming the form of the condominium
(“strata” or “body corporate” but hereinafter “condo”, the most common term globally)
corporation that purchases and manages security to safeguard residents and property
values. Public governments in North America and beyond are installing corporate secu-
rity units to protect assets and requiring personnel to maintain certifications designed for
corporate operations. These developments are not foremost about seeking profit.
Corporatization has entered the security world and raises troubling issues of which
scholars and government policy-makers should be wary. This form of organizational
governance affects how security is provided, who sets security priorities, the types of
security knowledge and personnel deployed to pursue them. When a corporate form
provides security, it tends to keep key decisions opaque and immune from broader
influence, making it difficult to render security provision accountable to the public or
specific communities or influence how the public or urban communities will be con-
trolled, watched, and acted upon. Corporatization of security comes with undemocratic
and secretive features but this is not simply something happening in world of private for-
profit corporations. Rather, this corporatization is seen entering public governments too
so far mostly in Canada and the US, and sometimes emerging alongside or displacing
community-centered urban residential housing governance (such as non-profit cooper-
atives) and community-based policing, among other forms. Corporatization tends to
corrode accountability and legitimacy of security in ways policy-makers should recog-
nize, while criminologists’ methods and critique need to attend more to detailed oper-
ations of the corporate form, its growth, and consequences for security provision on the
ground, and not only focus on, for example, ownership of security organizations
far above.
This paper contributes to literature on policing, private security, and securitization
(e.g., Ransley & Mazerolle, 2009; Dorn & Levi, 2007; Sarre & Prenzler, 2000) by reveal-
ing how this corporatization trend is occurring and its implications in three distinct
under-researched realms. Corporatization, commodification, privatization, and market-
ization are key terms used in criminology to theorize and explain such trends. Yet these
terms are at times conflated or erroneously invoked. Little attention is paid to develop-
ing how corporatization relates to commodification, privatization, or marketization.
Here we develop an analytically defensible understanding of security corporatization
and demonstrate its purchase beyond profit-seeking private corporations. This matters
for conceptualizing security and requires more theorizing of and research on corporat-
ization of security, which we argue is primarily about organization and governance, not
ownership. We suggest corporatization be understood as the process of any organiza-
tion adopting corporate governing principles and form. Our interest is in corporatiza-
tion of organizations that oversee or provide security, although this term is relevant to
other criminal justice areas. Previous work on security has neglected corporatization’s
emergence and consequences or conflated it with other terms. We elaborate security
corporatization’s contours by drawing on recent empirical work and comparing to allied
concepts as well as contrasting with community governance of security.
194 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 52(2)
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