Key Points

• Improved cooperation between public police and private security forces can significantly boost community protection by pooling resources and expertise while addressing modern security challenges.
• Experts like Professor Martin Gill and Professor Gloria Laycock emphasize that bridging the gap between these sectors through joint training, shared intelligence, and trust-building not only optimizes operational effectiveness but also counteracts the evolving nature of crime.
• The need for structured yet flexible collaborations is essential for ensuring that both public and private stakeholders can redirect resources towards preventing serious crimes, ultimately leading to safer and more secure communities.

The safety of citizens around the world could be enhanced if public police worked more cooperatively with private security forces, according to a global survey of security experts and perspectives from leading security scholars, including Professor Martin Gill, criminologist and Director of Perpetuity Research.

“Let me be blunt. The relationship between the private security industry and public law enforcement is patchy, underdeveloped, and a wasted opportunity,” writes Gill in GSB 2025, a new report that rates the security industry and global security on 10 critical issues. “The logic of all those responsible for protection to work together is compelling, and the drawbacks in not collaborating are considerable for both sides—and it is the public that loses out, and the offender that gains.”

Gill is not alone in this view.

Gloria Laycock, Professor at the University College of London and founding Director of its Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, believes there are many areas in which better cooperation would lead to safer societies, including joint training and better sharing of data and intelligence. “The public police and the private security sector each have outstanding abilities and share common goals — to ensure that our communities are safe and secure,” according to Laycock, also a GSB 2025 contributor.  “It seems to me that these goals would be so much more efficiently and effectively achieved by working in partnership.”

There is, of course, a long history of private security and public police working together, but collaborations are often conducted on an ad hoc basis or regarded as side projects. And Gill notes that many of the best examples of cooperation are driven by motivated and dynamic individuals, rather than a system of coordination, which makes them harder to sustain.

Utilizing Private Security for Public Good Grows More Important

Laycock points out that certain categories of crime have been successfully addressed in the past by following a formula that includes making an act of crime harder, raising the odds of being caught, and reducing the reward for perpetrators. She believes that organized crime, which is growing more problematic in many parts of the world, can be addressed in a similar manner.

“Organised crime is well established, lucrative, and complex, but there is no reason in principle why the same general approaches would not work. To tackle these crimes, we need a step change in our response,” writes Laycock. “So, what needs to be done? A priority is for a better working partnership between public policing and the private security sector.”

In light of growing protection needs, competing priorities, and limited public resources, community safety increasingly requires maximizing the disparate strengths and skills of both police and private security. Criminal networks are growing in sophistication and urban challenges like minor crimes, homelessness, public drug use, and mental health crises are increasing, placing additional burdens on public officials and law enforcement.

“As crime evolves and safety concerns grow, collaboration between these sectors has become essential,” according to Hon. Christian Paradis, P.C., LL.B., President of Paradis Solutions and Associates and former Member of the Parliament of Canada. He notes that private security firms can now be tapped for a greater range of services, including surveillance, loss prevention, and crowd management, which can alleviate burden on public law enforcement forces.

Stronger partnerships between public law enforcement organisations and the private sector could further enable law enforcement organisations to focus their resources on serious crimes and impactful community policing efforts. — Hon. Christian Paradis

Safer Communities via a Shared Security Model

Paradis says there is “no need to reinvent the wheel” when it comes to forging better partnerships.  Past successful efforts have yielded best practices that make it easy for public agencies to secure benefits from a shared security model. These include relying more heavily on private security resources to affordably maintain security in public spaces and address less serious issues of disorder so that police can be re-oriented toward more significant criminal matters.

So why aren’t public officials making effective use of private security expertise? Why is there often an informational divide between public police and their counterparts in the private sector?

“First, do the police and private security agencies trust each other? There is some evidence that they do not,” says Laycock, who notes that trust building is a first step to enhancing cooperation.

Gill’s research on public-private security partnerships identifies six key opportunities for improving engagement, overcoming barriers, and realizing the enormous potential that working together represents (“Optimising Joint Working between the Police and Private Security,” Perpetuity Research, July 2024). “The first is for all parties to fully understand what the private security sector does now,” says Gill. “There is a need to change the narrative around the flawed assumption that public protection is possible without the private security sector.”

He points to the fact that the security sector already effectively protects ‘private space’ — in which the public work, live and spend leisure time — with minimum police input. The sector also assumes considerable responsibility for protecting the critical national infrastructure, he notes.

Once private security’s role is understood and appreciated, Gill says research proves there is value in the following actions:

• Stress the similarities between the two. “These are striking. Both are committed to reducing crime, gathering intelligence and being visible.”
• Be clear how private security benefits. While there is always a financial motive, in good organisations it is a driver of good practice and a key to winning business, says Gill.
• Be clear how the police (and public) benefit. “The private security sector offers resources, expertise, and data/intelligence; it protects people, places, and infrastructure; and it mostly operates in domains the police cannot realistically cover.”
• Recognize that working jointly does not have to be onerous. Formal collaborations can be important and valuable but are not always necessary, says Gill. For example, private security acts not only as the ‘eyes and ears’ of the police but it also a key asset in amplifying key messages about safety and security.
• Strong leadership (on both sides). Gill said this point was made by three quarters of respondents to his organization’s survey, and is often an obstacle, due to fragmentation in the private security industry and the autonomous nature of police forces.

In a world where threats are evolving and urban populations are swelling, the question of how effectively public law enforcement and private security services collaborate has never been more pressing. Many communities are contending with police force reductions, service limitations, outdated equipment, and the elimination of special programs. These realities are forcing public officials and law enforcement agencies to rethink strategies toward community safety, and greater utilization of private security resources provides a proven path to crime prevention and greater security.

For more information

GSB 2025 is a comprehensive exploration of critical challenges facing the security services industry and global security, blending survey results with unique perspectives from more than one dozen subject matter experts.

‍