PRIVATE PROTECTION: SECURITY OFFICERS IN ALASKA.

• Author: GUDDE, LEVI
• Position: Brief Article

According to the Alaska Police Standards Council, the agency that certifies public law enforcement officers, there are slightly more than 1,000 sworn officers in Alaska.

That compares to about the same number of licensed security officers in Alaska as well.

However, the number of licensed security officers does not include proprietary security officers, such as those working for hospitals, hotels and retail stores, who are direct employees of the organization they protect, and are not required to be licensed by the state. Altogether, counting licensed and unlicensed officers, security industry in siders agree that there are about 2,000 security officers in the state today.

That figure parallels to the rest of the U. S. where private security officers now outnumber public police officers by more than a 2 to 1 margin. And the gap is widening. In an in-depth report on the growth of the private security industry, sponsored by the National Institute of Justice, it was predicted that private security would employ nearly 2 million people this year.

In that same report, it was estimated that annual expenditures, nationwide, for private protection was forecast to be more than $104 billion this year, as compared to $44 billion for police protection, including all federal, state and local agencies.

The increasing growth in the private protection sector, and the limited growth of public law enforcement, is primarily due to several factors. They include, increasing workplace crime, increasing fear of crime, decreasing rate of government spending for public protection, and an increasing awareness and use of private protection products and personnel as cost-effective protective measures.

According to the National Institute of Justice report, the cost of economic crime in America is now estimated at a staggering $120 billion annually--that's more than 2 percent of the gross national product. The reason it is estimated is that there are no hard and fast numbers to draw from because much economic crime is resolved privately, not through the public criminal justice system.

One important reason that police play such a small role in solving such crimes as fraud, employee theft and computer crime, is that their workload of handling street crime and other calls for service is extremely heavy. Moreover, in spite of their best intentions, police often lack the training and resources required for investigating business crimes.

State and municipal law enforcement...