We are in a new age of economic austerity, and private contracting is only more efficient for temporary services. If you need a new annex built on to your building, it makes sense to hire private contractors to do it, because even if it is more expensive in the short term, it's much less expensive than permanently hiring on a full time construction staff. However, if you have an on-going regular need like IT for example, you will save money by hiring permanent IT staff because you cut out the private-contractor middle-men. So in the case of janitorial or security, it makes a lot more sense in times of tight economic budgets to have these services carried out by employees rather than by private contractor employees.
With the middle-men out of the way, there is more cash to go into wages, training, benefits, etc. which improves retention and thus professionalism and quality of service. In house security is better security, especially over the long run.
Another issue of professionalism is ethics. Ever since private security formed in the USA, there has been a temptation to use private security unethically (such as killing organized-union members, capturing escaped slaves, etc.) Many make the argument that the legal separation between an organization and it's security staff through a 3rd party contractor allows for more legal protection. However, it seems that this protection is so that the organization can demand unethical behavior from the contractor, such as abusing the security staff themselves, manhandling the general public, and spying on employees in ways that would otherwise be a breach of contract. It is demoralizing for security staff to endure unethical behavior, and lowers retention and thus over all professionalism on the team. The over all quality of security services will improve as the organization owns its ethical decisions.
Because the USA is transitioning to a service economy, the newer employees coming into security are often better qualified and educated than the people already in the private security industry. These newer employees are also more in touch with the latest trends both "on the street" and with technology. There is often friction between the private security company's main office, and the on-site security staff who are already professionalizing faster than the main office. Cutting out that main office middle man will help organizations find out how to improve their security from the on-site security staff much more effectively.
Think about this: We seriously live in a world where a criminal or terrorist can stand across the street from a security officer with a smart phone, and take pictures of that security officer and his site, and sell those pictures in minutes to the highest bidder on the internet. Meanwhile the security officer can only retaliate with equal photographic force if he sneaks his game-playing, internet-browsing, texting, email-sending smart-phone into work past his employer. How can private security companies expect to survive under these pathetic conditions?
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