Perception of police legitimacy among private security officers

Abstract

The private security market is growing around the world, and public police are no longer the predominant agents of order maintenance and crime prevention. This development has important implications as different policing agents come in contact with each other. Specifically, understanding how they view each other can help increase the benefits of today’s paradigm of security governance. Despite abundant research on citizen perceptions of police, few studies explore private security officers’ opinions about their public counterparts. Therefore, this research explores private security officers’ perceptions of the police in South Korea. Results show that the respondents’ attitudes toward police performance and distributive and procedural justice have varying influences on the three dimensions of police legitimacy: Obligation to obey, trust, and normative alignment. Additionally, the authors suggest the police should understand that private security officers’ perceptions of police legitimacy are influenced by distinct factors depending on contact experience and employment type.