Author: Edited by Prof Martin Gill
ISBN No: 9781 137323279
Review date: 08/05/2024
No of pages: 1088
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publisher URL:
http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-handbook-of-security-martin-gill/?k=9781137323279
Year of publication: 21/08/2014
Brief:
The Handbook of Security, second edition. Hardback, 1088 pages, £165. ISBN Published 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan
price
£165
The second edition of The Handbook of Security is a mighty book, writes Mark Rowe.
Simply to get dozens of authorities in various fields of security management and crime prevention to write chapters and to put the resulting 1000-plus pages inside book covers is an achievement – that the editor Prof Martin Gill, pictured, in an introduction says took him two years. It’s weighty – literally and metaphorically; and is two inches thick. It’s difficult to know where to start – the 44 chapters cover just about every angle of security you can think of, though Martin Gill says that he could have added more. While you may baulk at the price – £165 – that boils down to less than £4 per chapter and as with other collected works, you often get a condensed version or digest of the author’s work on the subject. Take chapter 39 about corporate security by the editors of a new collection about corporate security, costing £65. On that basis to pay for the same amount of learning, book by book, would cost you thousands of pounds.
So many names familiar to students of security management and indeed readers of Professional Security are inside this handbook. The criminologist Ken Pease asks the provocative question ‘what have criminologists done for us lately?’ and even more provocatively answers, ‘not much’. The former senior Labour MP and campaigner for industry regulation Bruce George opens with a chapter on history. A section is given over to offences, old (burglary, workers who kill on the job, counterfeiting, identity theft) and new (cyber). Next come four chapters on sectors such as retail (by Adrian Beck, who you might have heard giving a talk at IFSEC 2014). Then arguably the least necessary part of the book and the least useful for the security practitioner, seven chapters on ‘researching security’, though in fairness security will get nowhere if it does not measure itself and learn what it does well and not. Or indeed study what criminals are doing. Hence for instance the chapter on crime mapping, described as ‘now a mainstream practice in police organisations and the security industry more generally’. As Kate Bowers and Shane Johnson point out, you only have to go onto the official police.uk website to view crime data; and millions of us have. Bowers and Johnson by the way are academics from the Department of Security and Crime Science at University College London, one of the places to be for ‘crime science’. In other words, Martin Gill has gathered authorities from across the English-speaking world. He has written one of the chapters himself, a taking stock of where we are with CCTV. Its cost-effectiveness after all the billions poured into it in the UK alone is ‘contentious’. As he points out, CCTV can ‘work’ in various ways, putting off criminals, or detecting and identifying those that do crimes. Briefly, CCTV is best not introduced alone (but then how can you say if lighting or fences and beware signs are the effective things?!) and works better with good operators and more capable technology (such as facial recognition). He sums up that ‘we still know relatively little about when and how CCTV works best’. He ends by charting some likely possibilities over the next decade: analytics, body-worn cameras, drones; and as he warns, we should not take it for granted that CCTV is effective.
The next, deceptively simple chapter by Alison Wakefield and Mahesh Nalla covers the ‘security officer’ asking such questions as how many are there (two million in Europe), what sorts of people are they, and what are their working conditions and pay? And what are they trained in, and how do they relate to the public and police? All questions that matter to multi-national guarding companies and indeed buyers of their services. That chapter like the others offer plenty of further reading, of use if you are taking a master’s degree in risk and security management or related course. After that chapter comes a related one on private military companies, that have become part of the landscape of more dangerous parts of the world for doing business such as Iraq.
For security manager readers, the chapter after, by Prof Joshua Bamfield on security and risk management, may be the first one to turn to, as it goes over the management half of security management, something easily overlooked as you deal with shop thefts and identity cards. Or as Bamfield concludes, ‘the modern security department needs to move away form a pre-occupation with guarding and low-level crime to see itself as having a key, strategic impact upon the organisation’. Or, if you don’t have the time or energy to take on all 1000 pages, you might take on the last 100, which pose such questions as ‘where next for the professionalisation of security’ by Alison Wakefield. As she sets out, the discipline has come far in the last 20 years or so, but there’s plenty to do, whether measuring competencies and certificating, or banding together in industry associations, or doing continuing professional development (CPD).
Of all the chapters, perhaps the most significant – given that security is a service, with buyer and seller, provider and consumer – is by an Australian, Julie Ayling, on the ‘commodification of public security’ who takes the case of G4S and the 2012 London Olympics to go into the buying and selling of security and ask just what ‘commodification’ is – private contractors doing outsourced public work and police behaving more like businesses in the market. Thought-provoking also is the chapter following, by Andrew Adams, on ethics, or ‘principled decision-making in hard cases’. In other words, security is about more than services and products; it’s about trust and respect. Last but not least a final chapter by Martin Gill explores ‘some contradictions of modern-day security’. Such as: surveillance which security is often associated with may be seen as a threat to freedom, but at the same time it can protect freedom. Gill draws on his research of the last few years on what a security leader looks like; and what’s the security man’s status, compared with other functions of a business (not high, but higher than facilities). He reports that many in security believe that cheap security is being favoured, ‘without an appreciation of the loss of benefits’. He suggests a focus on value-adding rather than unwelcome cost. Just as he shows the role of security in organisations, so the entire book shows security management as valid and mature and seeking to understand itself and improve.
The Handbook of Security, second edition, edited by Prof Martin Gill. Hardback, 1088 pages, £165. ISBN 9781 137323279. Published 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan. Visit http://www.palgrave.com.
Table of contents:
Introduction; Martin Gill
PART I: DISCIPLINES AND SECURITY
2. History of Security; Bruce George and Steve Kimber
3. Environmental Studies and Security; Richard H. Schneider
4. Criminology and Security; Graham Farrell and Ken Pease
5. Politics, Economics and Security; Adam White
6. Engineering and Security; David Brooks and Clif Smith
7. Design and Security; Paul Ekblom
PART II: OFFENCES
8. Terrorism; Kumar Ramakrishna
9. Murder at Work; Zech Lee and Bob McCrie
10. Workplace Violence; Amy L. Stutzenberger and Bonnie Fisher
11. Piracy and Robbery; Robert Beckman and Monique Page
12. Organised Crime; Mike Levi
13. Commerical Burglary; Rob Mawby
14. Identity Fraud; Henry Pontell and G. Geiss
15. Cyber Crime; Lennon Chang and Peter Grabosky
16. Counterfeiting; Virginie de Barnier
PART III: CRIME AND SECURITY IN SECTORS
17. Crime, Security and the Retail Sector; Adrian Beck
18. Crime, Security and Tourism; Rob Mawby
19. Crime and Security and the Food Sector; Hope Johnson and Reece Walters
20. Crime, Security and the Financial Sector; Mark Button and Martin Tunley
PART IV: RESEARCHING SECURITY
21. The Influence of Security Research; James Calder
22. Knowledge Transfer; Paul Ekblom
23. Working with Offenders; Richard Moule
24. The Ethnographic Approach and Security: The Case of Airports; Alan Kirschenbaum
25. Crime Mapping; Shane Johnson and Kate Bowers
26. Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis; Matthew Manning
27. Evaluations and Randomized Controlled Trials in Security Research; Read Hayes and Kyle Grottini
PART V: SECURITY PROCESSES AND SERVICES
28. Signs; Nick Tilley
29. Technologies and Security; Clifton Smith
30. Alarms and Security; David Brooks
31. CCTV; Emmeline Taylor and Martin Gill
32. Security Officers; Mahesh Nalla and Alison Wakefield
33. Private Military Companies; K. Carmola
PART VI: SECURITY AND ITS MANAGEMENT
34. The Role of Partnerships in Security Management; Tim Prenzler and Rick Sarre
35. Management and Risk Management; Joshua Bamfield
36. Disaster and Crisis Management; Dominic Elliott
37. Managing Intelligence and Responding to Emerging Threats, Patrick F. Walsh
38. Regulation and Security; Tim Prenzler and Rick Sarre
PART VII: CRITIQUING SECURITY
39. Corporate Security; Kevin Walby and Randy K. Lippert
40. Liberty and Security; John Deukmedjian
41. Professionalisation and Security; Alison Wakefield
42. Trading and the Commodification of Security; Julie Ayling
43. Security and Ethics; Andrew Adams
44. Some Contradictions of Security; Martin Gill.
About the editor
Martin Gill is Professor of Criminology and Director of Perpetuity Research and Consultancy International. He is a Criminologist and Fellow of The Security Institute, a member of the Company of Security Professionals and a Trustee of the ASIS Foundation.
The contributors:
Andrew A. Adams, Meiji University, Japan.
Julie Ayling, Australia National University, Australia.
Joshua Bamfield, Centre for Retail Research, UK.
Adrian Beck, University of Leicester, UK.
Robert Beckman, University of Singapore, Singapore.
Kate Bowers, University College London, UK.
Mark Button, University of Portsmouth, UK.
James D. Calder, University of Texas, USA.
Kateri Carmola, Carmola Consulting Group, USA.
Lennon Chang, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
Virginie de Barnier, Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management, France.
John E. Deukmedjian, University of Windsor, Canada.
Paul Ekblom, Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, UK.
Dominic Elliot, University of Liverpool Management School, UK.
Graham Farrell, Simon Fraser University, USA.
Bonnie S Fisher, University of Cincinnati, USA.
Gilbert Geis, UC, Irvine, USA.
Bruce George, University of Portsmouth, UK.
Peter Grabosky, Australian National University, Australia.
Kyle Grottini, Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC), USA.
Read Hayes, University of Florida, USA.
Hope Johnson, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
Shane D. Johnson, University College London, UK.
Simon Kimber, Project Manger, London, UK.
Alan Kirschenbaum, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Israel.
Seungmug (Zech) Lee, Western Illinois University, USA.
Michael Levi, Cardiff University, UK.
Randy K. Lippert, University of Windsor, Canada.
Matthew Manning, Griffith University, Australia.
Rob Mawby, University of South Wales, UK.
Robert D. McCrie, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, USA.
Richard K. Moule Jr., Arizona State University, USA.
Mahesh K. Nalla, Michigan State University, USA.
Monique Page, Centre for International Law, Singapore.
Ken Pease, University College London, UK.
Henry N. Pontell, University of California, Irvine.
Tim Prenzler, Griffith University, Australia.
Kumar Ramakrishna, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore.
Rick Sarre, University of South Australia, Australia.
Richard H. Schneider, University of Florida, USA.
Clifton Smith, Edith Cowan University, Australia.
Amy L. Stutzenberger, University of Cincinnati, USA.
Emmeline Taylor, Australian National University, Australia.
Nick Tilley, University College London, UK.
Martin Tunley, University of Portsmouth, UK.
Kevin Walby, University of Winnipeg, Canada.
Alison Wakefield, University of Portsmouth, UK.
Patrick Walsh, Charles Sturt University, Australia.
Reece Walters, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
Adam White, University of York, UK.
