The high levels of crime in South Africa are a popular topic of conversation amongst South Africans. As a result of the high levels of crime in South Africa, many South Africans employ private security companies in order to protect themselves and their property. The opinion exists that these private security costs should be allowed as a deduction against their taxable income. The study investigates certain factors that may influence crime, the private security industry and these companies’ perception on the duties of the South African Police Service. In order to determine private security companies’ perception on the duties of the South African Police Service, a questionnaire was conducted. The results reflected not only that private security companies are more effective and proactive in the prevention of crime, but also that they have a faster reaction time to emergency calls than the South African Police Service. This can lead one to argue that it has become a necessity to incur private security costs in South Africa. It also discusses current South African tax legislation in comparison with international trends. The study concludes whether the deduction of private security costs for the individual against taxable income is allowed in South Africa. AFRIKAANS : Die hoë vlakke van misdaad in Suid-Afrika is ‘n gewilde onderwerp van bespreking onder Suid-Afrikaners. As gevolg van die hoë vlakke van misdaad in Suid-Afrika stel baie Suid- Afrikaners privaat sekuriteitsmaatskappye aan om hulself en hul eiendom te beskerm. Menige Suid-Afrikaners is van mening dat hierdie privaat sekuriteitsuitgawes as ‘n aftrekking teen hul belasbare inkomste toegelaat moet word. Die studie ondersoek sekere faktore wat misdaad kan beinvloed, die privaat sekuriteitsmaatskappy industrie en hierdie maatskappye se opinie van die Suid-Afrikaanse Polisiediens se verantwoordelikhede. ‘n Vraelys is gebruik om privaat sekuriteitsmaatskappye se opinie rakende die verantwoordelikhede van die Suid-Afrikaansie Polisiediens te bepaal. Die resultate dui daarop dat privaat sekuriteitsmaatskappye nie net meer effektief en proaktief is in die voorkoming van misdaad as die Suid-Afrikaanse Polisiediens nie, maar ook dat hulle ‘n vinniger reaksietyd het na ‘n noodoproep ontvang is. Dit kan tot aannames lei dat dit ‘n noodsaaklikheid geword het om privaat sekuriteitsonkostes in Suid-Afrika aan te gaan. Die studie stel ook ondersoek in na huidige Suid-Afrikaanse belastingwetgewing in vergelyking met die internasionale werkswyse en sluit af met die antwoord op die vraag of privaat sekuriteitsuitgawes belastingaftrekbaar is vir Suid-Afrikaanse individue. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Taxation / unrestricted

Crime is rife in South Africa. Explanations abound for the high crime statistics, including the weakening of the family unit, the political history of South Africa, urbanisation and the fast growing urban neighbourhood, a weak criminal justice system and the abundant availability of firearms. In the quest to prevent crime, the private security industry has become a key performer in helping to deter and prevent crime and criminal activities. Yet there are no set criteria for selecting security officers against the backdrop of the high crime rates and a growing private security sector. Therefore the purpose was to develop a competency model for the selection of security officers for the safekeeping and protection of persons and property in the Thaba Tshwane area. I chose to do qualitative research using an interpretive approach in an attempt to understand the views of the participants concerning the work context and requirements of security officers. A grounded theory approach to the strategy of inquiry was employed as it was best suited to keeping the information that was gathered grounded in the participants’ own opinions. The focus of this research was on designing a competency model for security officers for selection purposes. Data were gathered through disciplinary records and open-ended structured interviews where the repertory grid and the behavioural event interview were applied.Eight subject matter experts, who included security officers, managers and a client working in the security industry, were used. The result of the study was a competency model of nine competencies and their definitions, which were grounded in the data and critical in functioning as an efficient security officer. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

Thesis (MA (Political Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Private military companies (PMCs)are increasing becoming involved in modern conflicts providing specialised skills such as combat services, planning, intelligence, training, support and technical assistance. They provide an alternative to weak state governments as Western governments have become increasingly reluctant to commit their troops to be involved in the civil conflicts of the developing world. Supporters of the employment of private forces see them as an effective solution to this combination of need from conflict-ridden weak states and reluctance of Western governments and international organisations to intervene in these conflicts ...

There is general consensus that mercenarism is and should remain prohibited. The difficulty that has arisen is firstly one of defining the exact nature of mercenarism, and more specifically what actions constitute mercenary actions. A further difficulty arises in that much of the legislation intended to outlaw mercenarism is impacting on the legal activity of private military and security contractors, who fall short of the definitional requirements of mercenarism. The two groups being so closely linked that they are often mistakenly conflated . There is currently a need to develop a response to the private military security industry, which is better suited to effectively regulate their activities, whilst also effectively criminalising the activities of those who actions amount to mercenarism. The dissertation therefore sets about analysing how these two distinct sectors: mercenaries and private military security companies, are regulated at an international and domestic level. It then uses the lessons learnt from these regulator attempts, and the various policy considerations which countries have to make, to propose a way forward in creating an effective regulatory system for mercenaries and private military companies at an international and domestic level. / Thesis (LL.M.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

Crime is rife in South Africa. Explanations abound for the high crime statistics, including the weakening of the family unit, the political history of South Africa, urbanisation and the fast growing urban neighbourhood, a weak criminal justice system and the abundant availability of firearms. In the quest to prevent crime, the private security industry has become a key performer in helping to deter and prevent crime and criminal activities. Yet there are no set criteria for selecting security officers against the backdrop of the high crime rates and a growing private security sector. Therefore the purpose was to develop a competency model for the selection of security officers for the safekeeping and protection of persons and property in the Thaba Tshwane area. I chose to do qualitative research using an interpretive approach in an attempt to understand the views of the participants concerning the work context and requirements of security officers. A grounded theory approach to the strategy of inquiry was employed as it was best suited to keeping the information that was gathered grounded in the participants’ own opinions. The focus of this research was on designing a competency model for security officers for selection purposes. Data were gathered through disciplinary records and open-ended structured interviews where the repertory grid and the behavioural event interview were applied.Eight subject matter experts, who included security officers, managers and a client working in the security industry, were used. The result of the study was a competency model of nine competencies and their definitions, which were grounded in the data and critical in functioning as an efficient security officer. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Com. (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)

US retailers lose over $30 billion in merchandise annually. Merchants also suffer billions more in losses of cash, supplies, time, equipment, and growing civil liability costs. In order to control these losses, retail companies use a combination of people, programs, and systems. A review of the literature indicates specialised loss prevention employees are an important part of many asset protection programs.;A major interest of managers is improving the efficiency of their crime and loss control processes, including loss prevention store detective programs. Retail managers commonly use job performance reviews to gauge the individual efficacy of store detectives. In addition to job training, and job output supervision, research has indicated certain stable characteristics of individuals helps explain actual job performance, making pre-employment selection a critical part of process improvement. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to the selection of in-store detectives in the literature.;Qualitative research was used to identify critical job tasks in order to develop and validate a specialised job performance instrument. The preliminary research with subject matter experts indicated four distinct job roles of store detectives. This job analysis also resulted in a new job performance rating instrument later tested in the quantitative phase of the project.;Subsequently, a quantitative study of 201 US store detectives (using the performance instrument in a concurrent validity design) developed four distinct selection models designed to help explain role-specific job performance variance. Four hypothesis regarding the relationship between biographical data, personality traits, cognitive ability and the four measures of job performance were tested using multiple and logistic regression. The four resulting models explained between 13% and 23% of the variance in detective job performance measures.;Implications of the project's findings, and suggestions are also discussed in context t the current sample, as well as prior work in pre-employment selection research.

The commercialisation of military services has increased in importance since the end of the Cold War. Commercial Military Service Providers (CMSPs) have found increased respectability and worked in states on every continent. Writing on CMSPs has similarly increased. Several high profile incidents have come under intense scrutiny, and has led to some portions of the literature demonising their use. However, there are still conceptual and theoretical issues which have been under explored. This thesis contributes to the literature which has sought to address this theoretical lacuna. Historical Sociology and comparative analysis are employed to analyse the implications of CMSP use on the state. A modified version of the Ideological, Economic, Military and Political (IEMP) model developed by Michael Mann, is used to theorise the impact of commercial security providers on existing sources of power within the state, and the relationship between them. The thesis uses two case studies which are representative of the use of CMSPs during this time period. The Sierra Leone Civil War and the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq since 2003. It will be argued that CMSPs alter the balance between power structures within the state, positively and negatively affecting the power of the state. The short term use of CMSPs has proven to be useful and of increasing importance; especially when military weakness is an urgent problem. However, although there has been no example of CMSPs intentionally threatening state stability, they can also subvert the power of the state. CMSPs, particularly when used for an extended period, have undermined the relationship between the sources of power, undermining political stability. Most significantly they weakened the state by undermining the strength it gains from its embeddedness in society.

The city as a focal point of both domestic and international security policy is characteristic of the 21st century security landscape in Europe. Amidst the 'War on Terror' and the pan-European battle against organised crime, the city is the location where global processes are actually taking place. Urban security is the local policy response both to such global threats as terrorism and local ones, such as violent crime. Public transport systems in particular came under threat after the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, Madrid in 2004, and London in 2005. This doctoral thesis studies security policy in three public transport systems – Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw – from a comparative perspective focusing on the conditions that made new and very specific understandings of security possible. The study argues that urban transport security has undergone radical changes during the last ten years. While transport authorities and the police used to conceive security as related solely to crime rates, today the focus of security practices consists of passengers' perceptions. The study shows how this shift is paralleled by a new discourse of 'security as emotion', and how it came into being. It concentrates specifically on the central role that surveillance and private policing assumes as the security policy shifts objectives to the inner life of the passengers. Today, complex governance networks of both public and private actors manage security in the three cities. The analysis shows how passengers are constructed in the urban security policy as children, consumers, and citizens. These different 'roles' constitute the passenger in the eye of urban security governance characterised by technocracy, 'friendly security', and individual responsibility. The introduction of new governance models for public administration, the legacy of European communist regimes, and rising fear of crime are central conditions for this new, sensitised urban transport security.

This thesis problematizes the phenomenon of privatization of security within the context of the neoliberal transformation of the capitalist state in Turkey. On the basis of the critique of neo-Weberian and Foucauldian literatures, it attempts to construct its peculiar theoretical-historical pathway on the relationship between state-coercion-class. It problematizes the historical constitution of this relationship within the context of the historical specificity of the capitalist state power. In this regard, the formation of the public police in the 19th century is discussed as an important, albeit contradictory, aspect of the materialization of this specificity. Furthermore, it is asserted that it was a reformative movement within which class practices of private provision of security were not totally eliminated, but incorporated into the impartially presented institutional materiality of the modern bourgeois state in and through class struggles. On this basis, the thesis discusses the privatization of security in Turkey as a contradictory transformation determined by the tension between the alleged impartiality and class nature of the state. It critically analyzes the historical period from the 1960s to the 2000s to identify different dynamics of transformation in terms of the privatization of security and institutional restructuring of the state. Within this framework, it argues that the institutionalization of private security in Turkey has signalled a trend towards the fusion of state power and class power in a new form with novel contradictions.

Univ., Diss.--Bielefeld, 2000. / Literaturverz. S. 263 - 276.