engleski

The public police officers' and private security guard's attitudes towards their professional training: The case of the Croatian capitol Zagreb

The starting point of the paper is the fact that high levels of urban growth and inadequate services coupled with recent political transitions sometimes lead to rising crime rates and calls from various groups for more representative policing. Because of the process of privatisation, decentralization and strengthening of a civic sector, in understanding urban policing, government officials must consider the different types of forces and services that exist within their national, regional and municipal contexts. Building effective urban policing involves understanding the contributions that the different types of services can make into policing policy.Despite growing presence of corporate policing, there has been comparatively little empirical work about the deployment of security officers, relationships between private and public policing and the role of private security in overall security matters. Research of this kind in Croatia and other countries in the region are still scarce and fragmentary.The main goal of this paper is to explore and compare the ways how public police officers and private security guards perceive their professional training.The survey has been conducted on representative samples of police officers and private security guards in the Croatian capital Zagreb. Data were collected through the anonymous and voluntary survey of police officers and private security guards using a questionnaire that was initially created in Slovenia. The descriptive analysis and Chi- square test reveal statistically significant differences between public police officers and private security guards in their perceptions of professional education and training. Private security guards show less satisfaction with their training and their preparedness for the job: they perceive their basic training and in- service training less adequate than public police officers. One can conclude that although private security companies have become the key component of the pluralisation of police tasks throughout Europe and the world, there are still problems with their professional education and training. Criminologists and security practitioners see a huge potential in the partnership between public police and private security sector, but such partnerships are only possible if at least a minimum level of competencies and professional integrity of both sides is ensured. It is obvious that the trends of professionalizing private security and harmonizing public and private police are crucial for the future of security services quality in the modern world.

Croatia, public police, private security, training, attitudes

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