“The guards and the guns they wield — pump action shotguns and old revolvers — mark the front doors of businesses and the guard gates of wealthy neighborhoods. They have become accepted members of a culture numb to crime,” Fieser writes. Professor Ungar says: “Can you imagine walking into a Guatemala City shopping mall and not seeing a guard? People wouldn’t know what to do…. Guards have become a social phenomenon. They are part of the fabric of urban life.”
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Wow, sometimes you stumble upon some really cool statistics that just give you a pause. This article is filled with those kinds of statistics, and this thing delves into South African and Brazilian statistics on security guards as well.
My take away on all of this, is that the main theme I see repeated over and over again throughout the world when it comes to guards or security contractors is that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Also, without standards and some kind of a regulatory body with teeth, you will have problems. And what do you know, our industry is coming up against these same issues, and I just don’t get why these lessons are not learned and applied? Well, I do know why–because security is a luxury in most folks minds, until someone gets hurt or killed, and regulating an industry takes effort and leadership. Most folks in charge in these countries are poor leaders and lazy or the government organizations tasked with monitoring and regulating, have no money or resources to do that job. (or they just don’t think it is a worthy expense)
Well, on the plus side, at least all of these security industries throughout the world have access to the internet. They can actually research what works and what doesn’t work, and the information is there for anyone interested in applying Kaizen to their industry. There are folks in these countries who care, and who are trying to do what is right, and bravo to them for keeping up the fight. Maybe the folks in Guatemala will be reading Feral Jundi and get a feel for the best industry practices? Who knows, but I have to think that everyone’s learning organizations will only be enhanced by what is currently out there. All they have to do is grab that information and ‘build a snowmobile’ out of it. –Matt
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Private security is good business in Guatemala
22 March 2010
In the United States there are 1.09 million private guards — that is, one guard for every 280 people; in Guatemala, a country of 13 million people, there are between 100,000 to 150,000 guards (the exact number is not known since many of these companies do not bother to register with the authorities); this is one guard for every 85 to 130 residents; the combined number of state and federal police in the United States is 883,600; Guatemala has roughly 22,000 active police officers
When it comes to crime and lawlessness, few countries could match South Africa. Just one example: The United States has a population of 307,000,000. South Africa’s population is 49,000,000. The number of murders committed in the United States between April 2008 and March 2009: 16,204. The comparable number in South Africa during the same period: 18,148. The murder rate in South Africa is 38.6 murders per 100,000 citizens. The world’s average for murder is 5 per 100 000.
The prevalence of crime, especially violent crime, is one manifestation of lawlessness. Another manifestation is the health of the private security industry. The business of private security thrives in countries on which the government does not offer sufficient protection to the people at the same time that it does not do enough to fight crime.
Two countries in which the private security sector thrives are South Africa and Brazil. There are other countries, too, in which offering private security services is a lucrative business.
Ezra Fieser writes in GlobalPost that Guatemala is one of these countries. Security guards employed by private companies in Guatemala outnumber police seven-to-one. Throughout Latin America private security guard forces dwarf police rolls (note that even the United States has more guards than police — 1.09 million to 883,600, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Fieser notes that this is about one guard for every 280 people).
In few places, though, are the guards as prevalent as in Central America, a region named by the United Nations last year as the most dangerous non-combat region in the world. Guatemala alone claims an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 guards — the exact number is not known because most guard companies are not registered or operate illegally. Since the population of Guatemala is 13,300,000, it means that there is about one guard for every 85 to 130 residents. The country has roughly 22,000 active police officers.
The government has no standards for minimum training, age, or experience for guards. Roughly three-fourths come from rural, mostly poor areas where Spanish is the second language and few have better than a sixth-grade education.
Since the country’s 36-year civil war ended in 1996, crime has worsened and police have failed to protect citizens. As is the case in countries such as South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico, residents and business owners call the guards a natural reaction to the rising crime rate. Fieser writes that in the past ten years, murders have grown by 145 percent to 6,498 killings in 2009, according to UN statistics.
Fieser notes that the demand for private security, and the consequent emergence of security guard companies actually predated — or at least ran concurrent with — the rise in violence. The civil war, which began in 1960 and pitted leftist guerrillas against the state, saw police officers target activists and suspected dissidents, who were often abducted and murdered. The military and death squads, meanwhile, terrorized indigenous Mayan communities. By 1996, 200,000 Guatemalans had been killed or disappeared, according to a UN truth commission.
The 1996 peace accords dismantled the police force and replaced it with a new entity, the National Civil Police. It has traditional policing duties, but the force is under-trained, underpaid, and, in many cases, corrupt. Earlier this month, the police chief and drug czar were arrested for alleged involvement in drug trafficking. It was the second time in two years the police chief had been removed under criminal allegations.
The end of the war also brought scores of multinational security companies to the country. A 2008 national police list of security companies obtained by GlobalPost under the Guatemalan equivalent of a freedom of information law, shows that before 1990, only twenty-one registered security companies existed. During the relatively calm 1990s — after war combed had died out and before street and violent crime began to spike — 56 companies set up operations in the country. This led to the mushrooming of foreign and Guatemalan-owned companies, both legal and illegal, that continues today.
Mark Ungar, a professor of criminal justice and political science at Brooklyn College who has studied the effect of the security forces, told Fieser that this is a common tale. While Latin American countries “tried to establish democracies, you started seeing concerns over the new government’s ability to maintain security,” said. “And the emergence of these companies is rooted in that.”
U.S. security giant g4s — previously known as Wackenhut Corp. — employs more guards than any other company in Guatemala. It registered with the government in 1980 and today employs about 5,300 guards that it outsources to clients.
Max Heurtematte, regional vice president for the company, told Fieser that problems have arisen because the government has no control over the system. The government needs to make sure “that the guards speak Spanish, by giving a basic language test … and that they are mature enough to handle the responsibility. For that, we need a basic psychological evaluation,” Heurtematte said. The company provides fifty hours of training to new employees, half dedicated to firearms training.
The government is creating a program to oversee the security firms, according to records. A police spokesman declined to discuss the new initiative, but a 26 November 2009 letter from the Interior Ministry said the police have been ordered to “implement a plan to supervise and monitor, at a national level, all private security companies.”
Such a plan would include identifying which companies are legal and registering the guns and equipment they use.
Currently even security companies registered with the government are not required to put their employees through a criminal background check. Using unregistered guns, guards are sometimes involved in shootouts.
Fieser notes that since the guards are poorly paid — normally at the minimum wage of $2,750 a year, or sometimes less — some of them also turn to crime. “This is one of the biggest security problems in the country,” said Raul Monzon, a deputy in the government’s human rights office. “Little training exists, they don’t know how to use a gun and they are everywhere.”
The guards are twice as likely to be killed than the average citizen. Last year, 107 security guards and bodyguards were killed, according to statistics from human rights groups.
“The guards and the guns they wield — pump action shotguns and old revolvers — mark the front doors of businesses and the guard gates of wealthy neighborhoods. They have become accepted members of a culture numb to crime,” Fieser writes.
Professor Ungar says: “Can you imagine walking into a Guatemala City shopping mall and not seeing a guard? People wouldn’t know what to do…. Guards have become a social phenomenon. They are part of the fabric of urban life.”
Story here.