Budget cuts in police departments allow private contractors to step in.

Budget cuts have opened the doors for private companies to move in. In St. Clair County, an alarm company has taken advantage of the new situation: starting February 1, for an extra $25 Barcom Security will send an armed guard to the homes of their customers whose alarms are triggered.

In Naperville, the police likely will seek out private contractors this summer to provide security at festivals and other public events rather than pay overtime to regular officers. In Southfield, Michigan, the police began contracting in mid-2008 with the security company G4S to operate a holding facility for prisoners before they are transported to the county jail a task previously managed by the county sheriff’s department.

Police elsewhere are outsourcing core functions. For example, in the face of budget cuts, Oakland, California, contracted armed private guards in 2009 to patrol one troubled neighborhood instead of hiring more police. And the Schaumburg, Illinois police have contracted out their internal affairs investigations.

Those moves are part of a longer term trend, according to economist Simon Hakim, who directs Temple University’s Center for Competitive Government, which studies innovative practices and privatization in government.

In the 1970s, says Hakim, there were 40 percent more police than private security guards. By 2009, those positions had flipped, with about 60 percent more private guards than public officers.

Hakim thinks partnerships between police and private companies make sense. In such arrangements, police still handle most investigations and arrests. But highly specialized tasks, like investigating identity theft, Internet fraud, or counterfeit goods, can be farmed out to firms with specific expertise.

For example, last year the companies Coach, Chanel, and Oakley contracted with Stumar Investigations for an undercover probe of merchants selling counterfeit goods in the Philadelphia area. Once Stumar had done the background investigations, they turned their files over to the police to make the arrests.

At the other end of the spectrum, Hakim says contractors can manage more straightforward tasks like transferring prisoners and providing security in public buildings. In Florida’s Hernando County, for example, private security guards from G4S took over courthouse security from sheriffs’ deputies in 2009, a move expected to save between $142,000 and $176,000 a year.

Savings like those can be traced in part to the wage difference between police and private guards. The yearly average salary of a private guard in 2009 was about $26,000, less than half that of a police officer, which averaged $55,000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Neither figure includes the value of benefit packages; Department of Labor figures for 2009 show that the benefits of state and local government workers averaged $13.65 an hour, while private-sector packages were worth $8.02.

Police also have at least high school and often college degrees and usually go through rigorous police academy coursework, often lasting 12 to 14 weeks. Security guards often don’t need a high school diploma and get far less training.



Link:
http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2011-03-outsourcing-the-police