Security failure: preventing another 9/11

• Safeguard

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27 June 2011The world has changed in the decade since the horrors of September 11, and in ways that affect us all.

Security has been strengthened almost immeasurably, and not just in airports. From train stations to offices, from Defence bases to oil refineries, from shopping centres to city streets - wherever we are and whatever we are doing, a profound increase in security has touched all our lives.

And yet this unprecedented security build-up has not been accompanied by a corresponding boom in the numbers of police. Instead, our protection is increasingly in the hands of an army of private security officers.

Those officers and the industry they work in have had to evolve rapidly and fundamentally in order to cope with the hugely-increased demands placed upon them. The industry has seen the rise of the dedicated and highly-trained security professional and the steady demise of the amateur, the untrained and the incompetent guard of the public imagination. But while the industry and its employees have become increasingly professional, pay and conditions have not - leading to a labour crisis in public security that may yet take a heavy, and potentially tragic, toll on a society and economy ever more vulnerable to crime and terrorism.