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Introduction
Although private security is ubiquitous in today's pluralised security landscape, attitudes towards this good are highly variable. In some countries, private security contractors operate in an unfettered marketplace. In other countries, their activities are regulated by the state so as to maintain a degree of public control over this traditionally sovereign function. The United Kingdom (UK) falls into the latter category. Over the past decade or so, the provisions of the Private Security Industry Act (PSIA) 2001 have facilitated the development of regulatory tools specifically designed to shape contractor functions. In recent times, this piece of legislation has received a growing amount of attention in line with three developments: first, contractors are taking on increasingly prominent roles, exemplified by the announcement in early 2012 that a wide range of police functions are being transferred to the private sector (Blair, 2012; Hughes, 2012; Travis and Williams, 2012); second, their market failures are accordingly becoming ever more controversial, as evidenced in the media furore surrounding the inability of G4S to fulfil the conditions of its £284 million London 2012 Olympics contract (Johnson and Davis, 2012; Prince, 2012; Travis and Gibson, 2012); third, the regulatory regime established through the provisions of the PSIA 2001 is undergoing major restructuring (see Home Office, 2012). Now is therefore a good moment to reflect on the successes, failures and prospects of UK security regulation.
With this in mind, the purpose of this article is to advance an up-to-date and comprehensive evaluation of the UK security regulation, drawing upon data generated during a 2009 study, jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Security Industry Authority (SIA). The article is divided into five sections. It begins with a review of the extant literature on UK security regulation in order to situate the contribution of the article within contemporary academic debate. The next section introduces the SIA: the public regulator established in the provisions of the PSIA 2001 and the focus of this evaluation. This section also provides a note on the article's methodology. The subsequent two sections then assess the extent to which the SIA has so far achieved its two main regulatory objectives: reducing criminality and increasing standards across the industry. The argument in these sections is twofold....