Becoming a private security entrepreneur: State careers, professional knowledge and company management. The case of Argentina

LORENC VALCARCE, FEDERICO

Göteborg

Congreso; XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology; 2010

International Sociological Association

Argentine private security companies are still largely managed by ex military and ex police officers. Since the 1950s, these companies have been created as a complementary professional activity, usually after retirement. In this process, former officers organized security companies and transferred their expert knowledge (human resource management, operational competence, logistics, and intelligence) to the private sector. They also obtained recognition from society, mainly their clients, and the authorities in charge of regulating the private security industry: this activity was then seen as an “appendix” of the public security system. But police and military know how should then be “recycled” in order to suit specific demands addressed by consumers, and adapt to the sort of service to be produced. In these new conditions, interaction between experts and the public gave birth to a new approach to the production of safety: private security services are primarily concerned by order maintenance, loss prevention and service provision, rather than crime control. The professional knowledge used by private security managers, its application to produce services, and the way in which they legitimate its supremacy is explored by directive interviews with managers and their clients and by the scrutiny of data from security companies and specialized press.