ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the wider contextual factors that have led to the emergence of private security companies working with domestic violence services. It is argued that four key elements have combined to create the circumstances in which for-profit security companies have become a member of the extended group of organisations that are responding to victims of domestic violence. As will be shown, private security companies have emerged in this space because of a mixture of long-term developments and also recent circumstantial factors. The long-term developments are (a) the ongoing failure of the state to adequately respond and provide for the needs of victims and (b) the growth of the private security industry. The more recent circumstantial factors are (c) the rise of tech-based methods of domestic violence that creates new challenges for keeping victims secure and (d) the unprecedented rise in funding of the domestic violence sector within Australia that has ensured that the financing is in place to engage and contract commercial security companies.
