ABSTRACT
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that approximately 70 percent of all companies rely extensively on contract security forces. Outsourcing became popular in the mid to late 1980s and is now common practice. This reliance on outside service, now referred to as strategic partnering or outsourcing, has become commonplace in organizations. Private security personnel continue to outnumber public law enforcement officers in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 420,750 Police Patrol Officers in 1997 as compared to 954,644 Security Officers. There are a number of reasons for this: the general economic growth of the post-war period; the movement of population from the central cities to the suburbs, which has led to the development of shopping centers and malls; tax restraints, such as Proposition 13 in California and the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which often reduce the funds available for public law enforcement; and an increasing fear of crime that has caused Americans to demand more security.
