The Human Element of the Security System

Abstract

In the exploration of security failure in the previous chapter, it was shown that the human element — often the security officer — is frequently seen as the cause of the failure. Either as a result of incompetence, lack of capacity, poor reputation or plain corruption it is the action (or inaction) of the security officer that appears to precipitate the failure. The quality of the human element is effectively ‘sub-prime’. However, it was also demonstrated that it is necessary to look at the broader socio-technical system to try and understand what conditions contributed to causing that human failure. If security guards are not properly trained to deal with a particular incident they cannot be blamed if they don’t deal with it properly. Those broader conditions are usually the responsibility of the security manager. It therefore seems entirely appropriate to examine security officers and security managers in a bit more depth. There is a small but growing body of research in this area, from which we can begin to recognise some of their strengths and weaknesses. These will in turn offer clues for Chapter 8 in identifying strategies to enhance the human element. We begin here, therefore, by looking at the existing research on security officers before moving on to examine security managers.

It occurred to me that it was an absurd idea of law enforcement to put an isolated, ill-paid, ill-equipped, security guard in a situation where he might have to confront a gang of seven or eight highly motivated robbers with weapons.

(McLeod, 2002: 18)