The everyday reality of private security work in Sweden: negotiations at the front line of public order maintenance

ABSTRACT

The private security industry has come to play a major role in Sweden and has become subject to a wide range of regulations. While these regulations give a sense of the role played by private security on the ground, it is important to study how private security actors themselves negotiate their way through these regulations, producing a more complex social order than regulations suggest. To study such everyday negotiations, this article draws on a theoretical approach that places regulatory structures and actors in a dialectical relationship, and on ethnographic studies of private security officers’ everyday reality in the market for security. This article shows the officers’ common concerns about their work, their collective interpretations of (legitimate) work practices, and how they negotiate regulatory structures and the behaviour of market actors (companies and customers). Taken together, insights are provided on how a complex structure–agency dynamic shapes the front-line roles of private security officers and creates a negotiated order on the ground, in turn ultimately redrawing the state/market divide in public order maintenance as envisaged in legislation.

KEYWORDS:

• Everyday private security work
• practice approach
• structure–agency dynamic
• public order maintenance

Introduction

The private security industry has come to play a major role in Sweden. Private security officers are increasingly taking on front-line roles that were formerly the domain of the police (Hansen Löfstrand 2019). As the private security industry began to expand since the 1970s and onwards, it became subject to a wide range of regulations. Due to early and relatively extensive regulation of the industry, Sweden has been depicted as a forerunner in an international perspective (De Waard 1999, van Steden and Sarré 2007, Button 2007a). The Swedish regulatory system is currently 5th in the European Union (EU) according to Button and Stiernstedt’s (2018) rankings of the quality of the regulatory systems for the private security industry in the EU. However, while the study of regulations gives a sense of the role played by private security on the ground, they provide a limited view. It is important to also study how private security actors negotiate their way through these regulations, producing a more complex social order than these regulations would suggest (cf. Leloup and White 2021).

In this article, I show that, in practice, some officers do more than regulations allow, and others do less, depending on company and customer expectations and level of training. As officers balance competing drivers – regulation, training, company and customer expectations – they negotiate a new order which is different from what regulations of private security envisage. In other words, when looking at everyday work practices, we see a structure–agency dynamic that redraws the state-market divide as enshrined in legislation.

In the following, I first situate my study in the context of existing research. I then map the structures and actors that constitute the context and shape the everyday work of security officers. Thereafter I argue for the usefulness of community of practice theories (cf. Wenger 1998, 2011, Bueger 2016) to analyse interactions between structures and agency, to elucidate how the structure–agency dynamic comes into play in the work of security officers, and describe the production of ethnographic materials. Following an empirical analysis of officer’s work practices, focused on recurrent examples of doing both less and more than the current regulation allows, I then show how the structure–agency dynamic shapes the front-line roles of security officers and creates a negotiated order on the ground. I conclude by arguing that this negotiated order ultimately redraws the public/private or state/market divide in the domain of public order maintenance in Sweden.

Ethnographies of private security extending into the public domain

In the policing literature, terms such as ‘public order policing’ or ‘public order maintenance’ have generally been reserved for the policing of crowds by the public police, with the policing of political protests, riots and football championships being typical examples (see, e.g. Reicher et al. 2007, Waddington 2020). This is arguably because of an ‘assumption that crowds pose an inherent threat to order’ and are particularly ‘associated with public disorder’ (Reicher et al. 2007, p. 403, italics in original). However, in this article, the term public order maintenance does not denote the policing of crowds by the public police. It instead refers to policing activities carried out in public or semi-public spaces with the purpose of maintaining order (including managing disorder). More specifically, I focus on private security officers working on behalf of public sector customers contracting them to prevent what they perceive to be potential threats to order and manage disorder.

Generally, in Sweden, the customers of private security companies range from individual households to private sector businesses and public sector organisations. As in other parts of Europe, public sector organisations express dissatisfaction with the public policing provision (Lister and Rowe 2016). In Sweden, for nearly two decades, we have seen a marked increase in public sector agencies as customers, for example, the Swedish Migration Agency, local public authorities (social services authorities, police agencies, etc.), county councils, and municipal, city and city district administrations throughout the country. Such public sector contracting of private security is often a result of political deliberation and decision-making in municipal assemblies and/or municipal executive committees. The developments during the last decades have, e.g. resulted in private security officers patrolling city centres and suburbs (avenues, parks, squares and neighbourhoods included).

In this article, I take a special interest in private security officers employed (as they are) by companies serving public sector organisations, because such ‘partnerships’ illustrate that what is ultimately at stake is the traditional division between state and market in public order maintenance. The empirical analysis centres on front-line officers’ accounts of how they relate to, and negotiate, the legislative rules and requirements, instructions and wishes of clients – namely public sector customers – concerning how they should work.

Ethnography is a key methodology in policing research (Bacon et al. 2020a, 2020b) and is ideal to explore front-line officers’ work practices and understandings. Some of the early and still today key ethnographic studies on private policing have provided a notable source of inspiration for the work presented in this article. Rigakos (2002) showed how the type of policing delivered by a Canadian private security company was new insofar as the company was ‘taking on functions similar to those of the public police’ (Rigakos 2002, p. 23), and thereby it defied artificial dichotomies in policing theories between public and private policing, agents and purposes. In addition, Rigakos (2002) showed that ethnographic studies are useful for illustrating broader reform processes in society. Wakefield (2003) studied private security ‘policing of publicly accessible sites of mass private property’ (Wakefield 2003, p. 83) and argued that the security company, the customer, and the security officer together determine the security product delivered (Wakefield 2003, p. 234). Button (2007b) provided in-depth knowledge of the legal powers of private security officers, their knowledge of them, and how they use them, drawing on case studies of two companies in the UK. More recent ethnographies of private policing have also provided a source of inspiration in attending to the private policing of public spaces, the negotiated nature of private security work and the frequent need of officers to attend to conflicting demands from both the customers contracting them and the publics they interact with (Diphorn 2016, Kammersgaard 2019, Eski 2020, Sharp and Wilson 2020). This article adds to the existing knowledge by showing that the extent to which officers use their statutory powers or not (do less than regulations allow) – or go beyond them (do more than regulations allow) – depend not on the regulatory framework in itself, and not only on officers’ knowledge of laws, but on a complex structure–agency dynamic developing on the ground, at which core are officers’ joint balancing of competing drivers: regulation, training, company and (public sector) customer expectations. This structure–agency dynamic creates a negotiated order which is different from the state/market divide as envisaged in legislation.

Research on private security provision of manned services in Sweden is scarce (although see Hansen Löfstrand 2013, 2015, 2019, Hansen Löfstrand et al. 2016, 2017). Stiernstedt (2019) has researched private security criminal investigations in Sweden. Berndtsson (2011, 2019) has researched professional self-images among Swedish commercial security experts and in the Swedish military services focusing on the Swedish provision of expertise abroad. Against this background, this article provides a unique account of the everyday reality of private security work in Sweden. Furthermore, officer agency in relation to regulatory structures and the market behaviour of security companies and their customers constitutes the ‘micro-foundation’ (cf. Gamble et al. 1996, p. 8) of the political economy of private security; thus, this article contributes to existing knowledge on the political economies of policing and private security (cf. Barlow and Hickman Barlow 1999, Rigakos 2002, White 2012, Reiner 2015).

The context: regulatory structures and main actors

In 1965, the Swedish Police Authority and the Swedish National Police Board (the central administrative and supervisory authority) were established. With the passing of the 1974 Act on Private Security Companies and the 1980 Act on Private Security Officers, some roles previously in the police domain were formally delegated to private security actors. According to the 1974 Act on Private Security Companies, such companies may conduct surveillance on behalf of others – public and private sector customers – and employ private security officers to provide services to their customers.

In Sweden, there are three types of private security officers. Private security officers of type 1 (väktare) are employed by security companies, and trained by the Security Industry’s Occupational and Work Environment Committee (BYA). The latter is a non-profit association and its members are private security companies and the Swedish Transport Workers Union. The Swedish Police Authority issues guidelines for the training of type 1 officers including nine days of studying rules, regulations and technical equipment, 160 h of supervised work, and four days on topics such as conflict management, law enforcement agencies and drugs. County administrative boards approve, authorise and control type 1 officers. However, it is company managers, such as the work leader of their work shift, who supervise their daily work. They are protected by rules on threats and violence against civil servants. Their powers are limited to citizens’ arrests; that is, they may detain someone who is spotted committing a crime or seen running from a crime scene if the crime would lead to imprisonment, but they are only obliged to document and report what they have witnessed (and may not act on suspicion only). Nevertheless, type 1 security officers commonly carry a baton and handcuffs. They regularly provide security services such as patrolling, CCTV monitoring, stationary security, shop security and reception services. Over the past decade, in contravention to laws relating to private security, private security companies also offer the service of ‘guardians of safety’ (trygghetsväktare) to municipalities concerned with threats to public order in and around their facilities and in certain public spaces of cities. These ‘guardians of safety’ are type 1 security officers tasked to patrol and engage with those parts of the public, often youths, perceived to constitute a threat to order (Hansen Löfstrand 2013).

Private security officers of type 2 (ordningsvakter) are employed by security companies (but according to regulations they may also freelance, i.e. be employed directly by customers, which is common in the night-time economy). According to the 1980 Act on Private Security Officers, type 2 officers are appointed, authorised, trained and controlled by the Swedish Police Authority to help maintain public order. They have a duty to report to the police. Local police agencies provide their training, consisting of 80 h on topics such as the relevant laws for private security guards, conflict management and medical care in emergencies. Type 2 officers have certain ‘limited police powers’, namely the right to refuse entry, detain or restrain people with handcuffs and remove a person by force. Type 2 officers thus have a significant authority after only 80 h of training (while public police officers are trained for 2.5 years). Type 2 officers work in the capacity of employees supervised by their security company management; at the same time, according to law they are obliged to help the police to maintain public order, for example, in public events such as demonstrations and sports events, and also in nightclubs, restaurants, shopping malls, court buildings, airports and shipping ports. Increasingly, city and city district administrations also contract type 2 private security officers to patrol larger public spaces in cities and towns around the country (Hansen Löfstrand 2019; cf. Kammersgaard 2019).

Type 3 officers (skyddsvakter) are employed by private security companies or by the Armed Forces. The Swedish Police Authority issues guidelines for their training, which is provided by the BYA and consists of eight days of studying law, emergency medical care, risk and threat scenarios, and similar topics. Those already authorised as type 1 or 2 officers may undergo a reduced training period of four days to be authorised as type 3 officers. Type 3 officers have extensive powers, the right to search people and property to confiscate items, forcefully remove people from a restricted area, and detain those suspected of espionage and/or sabotage. They may use a baton and handcuffs, and carry a firearm, and they are tasked with guarding ‘protected objects’, to prevent terrorism, espionage, sabotage and aggravated robbery. Protected objects are buildings, facilities and areas that have been granted enhanced protection according to the Protection Act (such as military bases, airports and police authority headquarters).

Apart from direct regulations (the 1974 and 1980 Acts), additional legislation indirectly regulates private security work. For example, the 1976 Act on the Care of Intoxicated Persons mainly relates to the responsibilities of the police but also states that private security officers shall apprehend overly intoxicated persons and hand them over to the police. Similarly, the 1993 Act on Orderly Behaviour in Public Places mainly relates to the responsibilities of organisers of public events and festivities but states that they are obliged to hire private security officers for order management tasks, and that private security officers working such events shall report any intervention to the police.

Private security elites have long depicted private security legislation dating from 1974 and 1980 as outdated and an obstacle to expanding business and legitimacy (Hansen Löfstrand 2019). However, Swedish governments have hitherto avoided additional formal delegation of tasks and responsibilities to private security companies and officers, although, as will be shown, they are at times informally delegated additional tasks and responsibilities. Governmental debates and investigations into what the Swedish police should and should not do – which tasks should be the responsibility of the police and which could possibly be delegated to private security officers – have been occurring on and off for three decades. The outcome has been governmental investigation reports (Hansen Löfstrand 2019), and yet another governmental investigation committee presented its conclusions in May 2021 (Swedish Government Investigation 2021). According to its suggestions, current laws should be amended so as to retrospectively legitimize the practice of public sector contracting of private security officers of type 2 to prevent public disorder and maintain public order in cities, city districts and towns throughout the country. Instead of such a practice being viewed as an exception to the general rule of law (reserving such practices for the public police), it should now be normal procedure, so as to relieve the public police from demands for more visible police presence in local communities. How did we arrive at this situation?

Nearly two decades ago, private security industry actors in Sweden became concerned about a marked decrease in economic growth in combination with the (historically) state-centred politics of policing in the country. The national political officials had regularly and publicly voiced the view that the use of force against the public in the country is the exclusive prerogative of the state, a viewpoint later highlighted by the lobby organisation. The Security Industry – established in 2013 – as ‘the greatest obstacle to expanding businesses’ (Hansen Löfstrand 2019, p. 7). In this context, and also concerned about the price dumping characterising the public procurement of private security services, the lobby organisation and its member companies approached municipalities, local authorities and counties. With a marked increase in contracts from public sector organisations, the industry managed to expand considerably (Hansen Löfstrand 2019, cf. van Steden and de Waard 2013). Public sector organisations – such as cities, city district administrations and county councils – thus responded to perceived local needs to increase public safety by buying patrolling services previously provided by the police. Contracts with public sector organisations in turn increased the legitimacy of private security providers in the eyes of both (potential) customers and the public. From the perspective of private security elites, it is ‘good to have the state as a customer’ because ‘then, suddenly, you have a completely different level of credibility’ (Hansen Löfstrand 2019, p. 11).

In January 2015, the Swedish government initiated a significant reform of the Swedish Police Authority, merging 21 regional police authorities into one single authority. The purpose of this centralisation was to increase national decision-making power, create a uniform police service that was easier to govern, and to increase the presence of the police in local communities. The police were thereby to ‘come closer to’ ordinary citizens and local communities (Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention 2016). In its most recent annual report, the Swedish Police Authority states it has about 34,000 employees, of which 21,000 are police officers. However, since the police reform of 2015, the number of police officers in external service, that is, conducting visible patrols in local communities, has, in fact, decreased (Pourkomeylian 2020). Based on a survey in 2021, The Security Industry reports that the industry consists of about 1400 companies and 47,000 employees, of which about 23,000 are security officers (most work as type 1 and/or type 2 officers, much fewer as type 3 officers). Hence, private security officers now outnumber police officers. Although the current Swedish government has set a goal of training 10,000 more police officers before 2024, the police are currently unable to provide sufficient visible police patrols to satisfy the demand for policing services in local communities. While the number of police officers on visible patrols has diminished, the private security industry has grown, and more and more private security officers are tasked to patrol and maintain public order in cities and town.

The Swedish Police Authority used to argue that neither a reduced police presence nor general feelings of insecurity or unsafety among the public constituted sufficient reasons to have private security officers patrolling public streets and squares. However, the demand for and lack of sworn police officers providing patrols, in combination with the municipalities’ perceived need to improve public safety, have led to a change. The police are now calling for ‘more collaboration’ with private security officers (specifically of type 2), who are therefore becoming increasingly visible on patrol in city centres, city districts, local squares and neighbourhoods. Private security officers patrol large parts of Sweden’s largest inner-city areas, and are contracted for such services in smaller cities and towns around the country as well. The current legislation ordains that this practice should be an exception rather than a rule. However, the Swedish Police Authority has requested that the Ministry of Justice review the legislation to enable private security to (lawfully) provide patrol services, previously considered the prerequisite of the public police. In their strategy for the future, Strategy 2024, the police evidently hope that this change will help ease the demand for local police presence.

Overall, in Sweden, security companies have exploited a supply-side deficit of public policing services. The deficit was caused by a decrease in public police officers in external (patrolling) services (notably, however, not caused by a decrease in governmental spending on the public police), in combination with a marked increase in the demand for public safety and security by local communities. Private security companies increasingly seek contracts with public sector customers to enhance their legitimacy and increase business, and public sector agencies are increasingly articulating their (public) preferences through contracts.

This section has illustrated the extensive regulations surrounding the increasingly prominent industry. Given how detailed these regulations are, observers might expect to be able to use them as a compass for understanding what private security officers do on the ground. This is not necessarily the case, however, because private security officers reinterpret regulations on the ground, creating a negotiated order. To illustrate this process, we need a theoretical approach and a dataset that helps us to elucidate this structure/agency dialectic; this is the purpose of the next section.

Theory and method

The structures and actors mapped out above shape front-line security work. I now draw on community of practice theories (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998, Li et al. 2009, Bueger 2016, Brooks et al. 2020) to understand and analyse the interactions between structures and actors, particularly security officers’ joint agency in relation to regulations, company management and their (public sector) customers. In this way, I shed light on the specific structure–agency dynamic shaping the front-line roles of officers. I begin from a theoretical notion of practices as the unit of analysis (Bueger 2016), meaning that my analysis focuses on typical ways of talking and acting, as well as relating to companies, customers and regulations in front-line security work. Such an approach helps to avoid constructing or reproducing structure–agency dichotomies and enables an empirical focus on front-line security work (cf. Bueger 2016). The structure–agency dynamic is illuminated by an ethnographic approach. In fact, shedding light on the dialectic nature of governance-agency relationships, including how such relations are negotiated, are ‘central to the ethnographic enterprise’ (Rigakos 2002, p. 28). The particular merit of community of practice theories (Wenger 1998, Lave and Wenger 1991) is that they highlight the collective character of negotiated practices (Bueger 2016).

Arguably, learning a front-line security job is a collective practice (cf. Lave and Wenger 1991), achieved in interaction with fellow officers, company managers and customers, and conducted according to formal and informal structures such as legislation and norms. This process shapes the front-line roles of officers. As noted above, the formal training of all three types of security officers is very short, which gives further justification for officers’ engagement in ‘joint activities and discussions’ (Wenger 2011, p. 2) concerning how to perform their front-line roles. Together, officers develop shared resources to do the job, address recurring problems and share common concerns. In practice, the nature of the front-line roles of private security officers is often quite different from those described by regulations and management (cf. Orr 2006, Brooks et al. 2020).

For the present purposes, each of the three types of security officers is conceived as a ‘community’ of practitioners jointly learning how to perform their roles in relation to structures and actors. As officers share front-line work experiences, they develop shared meanings of issues or problems, drawing on common resources and jargon to do the job (cf. Wenger 1998). Arguably, when security officers of the same type work for the same customer and collaborate to address issues perceived as problems, a sense of community is cultivated (cf. Contu and Wilmott 2003, Li et al. 2009). Empirically, the analysis is focused on concerns and dilemmas experienced by security officers, their joint understandings about how to relate to actors (companies and customers) and their interpretations and negotiations of regulatory structures.

As mentioned, we have seen a marked increase in public sector contracting of private security during the last two decades. Recent developments include security officers patrolling and maintaining order in public spaces of Swedish cities and towns although regulations do not allow such a large-scale private security policing of public space. To understand this development, I draw on ethnographic materials produced in 2011–2012, which was a key point in time: a period during which public sector contracting of private security gained momentum. Arguably, then, this article illustrates the limitations of regulative control over private security as well as the gradual informal delegation of responsibilities and work tasks from public to private sector policing agents. The main dilemma of private security officers serving public sector agencies – arising from the need to negotiate the demands of a state-centred regulative framework, company and (public sector) customers expectations – persists today and is likely even more intensely felt as many more officers today are tasked to maintain order in (geographically larger) public spaces.

During my fieldwork a decade ago, I took a special interest in the work of private security officers serving public sector agencies. The ethnographic materials were produced by ‘shadowing’ (Czarniawska 2007) or ‘going along’ (Kusenbach 2003) with security officers of all three types during their work shifts, informally interviewing them about work and conditions for work as well as observing them doing their work, producing field notes and keeping a detailed research diary. In total, the ethnographic material consists of field notes from 42 work shifts. The ethnographic materials (the production of which I account for below) were reanalysed for the purposes of this article to elucidate officers’ agency in relation to structures and actors, that is, the structure–agency dynamic shaping their front-line roles. The analysis has been guided by the question of how the three types of private security officers in Sweden interpret and negotiate regulatory structures and the expectations of private security companies and (public sector) customers in their everyday work.

Permission and access to study the work of private security officers was initially granted by the Chief Executive of a Swedish security company, whom I contacted and interviewed after having learned (by having read magazines produced by the industry) of the company’s good quality services. I was subsequently granted access to conduct three different sub-studies with the company’s members of staff:

1. I accompanied one group of type 1 officers carrying out night-time patrols by car and by foot and responding to alarms all over the city, serving both private and public customers and working 12-h-shifts. Initially, their foreman assigned a specific officer for me to accompany. During later stages of fieldwork, after having become acquainted with each other, I decided together with the officers who to accompany and when.

2. I accompanied a group of type 1 officers tasked to staff the reception desk and patrol the eight floors of a municipal homeless shelter, including its immediate vicinity, working 12-h day and night shifts. The officers working at the shelter were charged with the task of maintaining order at the place and making decisions about entry into and exit from the shelter and keeping unwanted people out of the shelter territory. As the shelter was staffed by officers around the clock, I was welcome to come and go as I pleased. When visiting the shelter I accompanied officers sitting behind the reception desk and patrolling the floors and its immediate vicinity.

3. I accompanied type 2 officers responsible for maintaining public order in nightclubs, bars and during public festivities. For the analysis in this article, I draw on empirical materials produced during two occasions when the company was performing services for public sector agencies: one occasion when five officers were tasked to conduct entrance checks to, patrol and maintain order at a university party for students, and one occasion when 21 officers worked together to conduct entrance checks to indoor areas, patrol indoor areas (nightclubs) and outdoor public areas during a public festivity in the city open to all citizens who had bought entrance tickets to the fenced off city area. During the two mentioned occasions, I mostly accompanied the supervising officers who, besides working just like any other security officer on duty, received all incident reports from their fellow officers in the group, which meant I learned about all incidents during the evening and night.

Following an interview with a Chief Executive of a different large multination security company – and receiving necessary permissions – I completed a fourth sub-study:

• (4) I accompanied a group of type 3 officers responsible for reception work and for patrolling and securing the lobby, the floors and immediate vicinity of the police headquarters. I was only granted access to accompany officers staffing the reception area. From this place, I had a good overview of the lobby and the outdoor areas (through CCTV-screens located behind the reception desk).

Hence, I did not start out my empirical study by sampling sites and observing the work of officers (as Wakefield 2003), but instead sampled companies (as Rigakos 2002 and Button 2007b) and interviewed CEOs since it was deemed as necessary to gain access to an hierarchical industry. At sites 2 and 4 CEOs, in turn, asked their customer to approve of my presence (whom I also met to discuss my purposes). Of course, this way of gaining permissions to carry out research also meant that when I approached members of staff I simultaneously had to inform them about my contacts with management and distance myself from management, the latter by emphasising that it was their daily work practices, the challenges involved, that interested me, and that I was not going to report back to management, so I emphasised my role as researcher intending to publish only in academic journals, and obligated to follow rules of ethical research conduct. While accompanying officers, I thus took the role of the ‘observer-as-participant’ (Gold 1958, cf. Button 2007b), meaning that my identity as a researcher was known to them and I did not help carry out their work activities. I carried out informal interviews with officers during my ethnographic observations (cf. Rigakos 2002) continuously documenting in notebooks or on my mobile phone to be able to produce a fully developed research diary.

Now, many years later, when I re-read all materials for the purposes of this article, I realised they comprised many stories and collective discussions about legislative rules as opposed to customer requirements and requests concerning how the security officers should work. These were combined with accounts of company managers who were absent in their everyday work and refrained from supporting officers by explaining to customers what security officers (of different types) could legitimately be asked to do. Below, I show how officers are asked by public sector organisations and private security company managements to do both less and more than what the legislation ordains. In doing both less and more, officers on the ground negotiate a new order which is different from what regulations of private security envisage. In other words, we see a structure–agency dynamic that redraws the state-market divide as enshrined in legislation.

Being asked to do less: the everyday practices and dilemmas of type 2 and 3 officers

Security officers of types 2 and 3 are regularly asked to do less than they are authorised to do and the legislation ordains, or less than they are obliged to do.

The police as a customer

As noted, type 3 security officers have considerable authority and power to protect restricted objects and areas, and may search people and property to confiscate items, and forcibly remove or even detain people suspected of espionage and/or sabotage. The type 3 officers providing security services at the police headquarters carried handcuffs and fully loaded weapons. The building contained the police headquarters, a custody suite and interrogation rooms. It is a restricted area, apart from the reception desk area, to which the public has access. Security officers at the police headquarters staffed the reception, conducted CCTV surveillance inside and outside the building, patrolled the floors and the immediate vicinity of the building outdoors, and shared the police radio communication system. In addition to their training as type 3 security officers, they had also passed police security checks and taken a short course about how the police wanted them to do their job.

The security officers had been instructed by the customer, that is, the security manager at the police headquarters, to request the service of a police patrol when observing any incident, and had been promised that the police patrol would then arrive ‘in no time at all’. Richard, one of the security officers who regularly staffed the reception and CCTV monitoring area, explained that the police ‘do not want there to be any incident between security officers and the general public where the officers have to fire shots at members of the public’. Richard added that because ‘this is such a sensitive security object, type 3 officers here must work defensively rather than offensively’, meaning that ‘everything needs to be checked by the police security manager’.

Generally, in the private security industry, working as a type 3 officer is associated with high status and prestige owing to the high degree of powers and authority exercised in their everyday work (Hansen Löfstrand et al. 2016). However, Simon, an experienced officer in the industry, explained that the security officers working at the police headquarters found that their powers and authority as type 3 officers were heavily restricted: ‘we may not refuse entry, remove, expel or detain people; we should call for a police patrol instead’. All officers working at the police headquarters had long experience of working in the private security industry, which was a requirement in the public procurement of its security services. Simon explained that he had a good eye for risks and potential security threats, thereby indicating that he could be trusted to use his authorised powers but adding that ‘the measures I take vary with the wishes of the customer’, indicating that he and his colleagues at the police headquarters follow the instructions of the customer. Thus, although officers had considerable formal authority and powers, they felt that the police had low expectations and did not trust them to carry out their authorised tasks, preferring them to function only as the eyes and ears of the police.

Managing customer, employer and police expectations to do less

The second paragraph of the 1980 Act on Private Security Officers regulates the public or semi-public areas where type 2 officers have the right to exercise their powers under the ordinance, for example, public gatherings and festive events, camping and sports sites, security controls, pubs, nightclubs and restaurants. The type 2 officers I accompanied during fieldwork worked in bars, restaurants and at public festivities to maintain public order according to the 1993 Act on Orderly Behaviour in Public Places. At the same time, they had to consider customer and company manager expectations not to overburden the police by calling for assistance. Officers were hence expected and asked to ‘do less’, that is, not comply with the legal requirement that parties not get out of control, and not call the police to detain persons under the Act. In short, security officers were to refrain from following the legislation on orderly behaviour in public places or calling for police assistance. However, doing just that resulted in even harder work for the security officers.

With the university as the customer, officers working to maintain orderly behaviour at student parties felt pressured to ignore excessive drinking and accept ‘the extremely high level of tolerance’ towards ‘students who have ingested a litre of alcohol’. Furthermore, as Sam put it, ‘it all depends on how the customer wants it’ but ‘if the licensing authority had appeared, they would have had major problems’. Robert commented that ‘we often feel we really want to make direct critical remarks’ to customers, for example, concerning the selling of alcohol and the organisation of entrance checks. Robert and his colleagues argued that many customers (in both private and public sectors) wanted them to overlook people bringing alcohol inside or drinking in public outdoor areas. Nevertheless, the security officers knew well that this was against the law. Robert spelled out the dilemma: ‘we have someone who pays our salary, the customer, and someone who tells us what to do, the police authority, but if we reprimand the customer, they will not hire us again’. The dilemma is whether to adhere to formal regulations or to the wishes of those on whom both private security companies and officers ultimately depend (cf. Eski 2020).

To complete work tasks in accordance with the legislation, the security officers depended on police assistance. To manage intoxicated people who were deemed incapable of taking care of themselves, or who posed a danger to others, officers were to follow the rules of the 1976 Act on the Care of Intoxicated Persons and promptly hand the apprehended person over to ‘the nearest police officer’. This was despite the fact that, as observed during fieldwork, there were no police officers nearby supervising or monitoring them in their everyday work, and they had therefore to phone the police and ask them to come and pick up the apprehended person. Police officers in external services were often unable to assist immediately (leaving security officers with apprehended persons to wait for many hours) or unable or unwilling to assist at all. Moreover, company managers, that is, their employers, also at times instructed security officers to think twice about calling for police assistance, in order for the company to retain ‘credibility’ in the eyes of the police. Consider the following account at an annual cultural festival, where security officers were contracted by the city administration:

During the evening and night, I stayed close to Anton, who had been assigned supervisor responsibility. In this role, he got to know about all interventions by his colleagues, which he was then to document and report to the customer, the security company management, and the police after the work shift ended. As the group leader, Anton decides whether or not to apprehend a person. On this particular night, the CEO of the private security company joined his staff, as taking care of the security at the city’s cultural festival is a particularly prestigious mission. I am exchanging small talk with the CEO as we watch Anton and two other officers coming out from the (indoor) club area, bringing a heavily intoxicated guest outside. The officers are saying to Anton that the guest should be apprehended under the legislation. Anton hesitates but decides to apply the Act and call the police. At this point the CEO tells Anton not to ask for the assistance of the police, because the guest is not ‘in a bad enough shape’ and ‘if you call the police when it comes to cases like this, you lose credibility, and the police then do not want to come when you call in connection with serious cases’. Anton hangs up the phone, and everyone realises there will be no detention under the Act, here and now.

According to the legislation, security officers must manage heavily intoxicated guests by detaining them and calling for police assistance; however, for the company (that had acquired the prestigious mission of securing this public event) to not ‘lose credibility’, the management instructed officers not to call for police assistance. This example also illustrates that the police do not always come to the assistance of security officers. The customer (i.e. the city administration organising the public event) did not want incidents involving the police for fear of bad publicity (cf. Rigakos 2002, p. 36), the officers explained. During the rest of that particular night, the security officers did not apply the Act on any occasion, and had to work hard to take care of heavily intoxicated guests by other means (e.g. by stopping a cab for them, or asking their friends to help them home).

Taken together, type 2 and type 3 officers struggled with the felt need to do less than what legislation ordains. Such communities of practice, resulting from officers’ joint negotiations of competing drivers (regulation, training, company and customer expectations), create another order on the ground than portrayed in legislation. The negotiated order redraws the state/market divide as enshrined in legislation. Also the community of practice of type 1 officers creates a different order than envisaged in legislation, although they were on the contrary asked to do more than regulations allow.

Being asked to do more: the everyday practices and dilemmas of type 1 officers

As shown, in practice, the nature of the front-line roles of private security officers is different from those described by regulations (cf. Orr 2006, Brooks et al. 2020). In contrast to security officers of types 2 and 3 who were regularly asked to do less than they were authorised and obliged to do, type 1 officers were – as we shall see – regularly asked by customers and employers to do more than they were authorised to do.

Working in a grey zone and selling an illusion

That’s a classic. They do not know what kind of service they have bought. […] The customer thinks they bought one thing. I go there and deliver something completely different. (Maria, type 1 officer and ombudsman)

Type 1 officers often described having to balance their own lack of formal powers with the high expectations of their customers. Furthermore, as Martin explained, ‘the public and the customer do not know that we have so few powers.’ Type 1 officers are not obliged by law to intervene when observing incidents. However, Ali commented that ‘you are expected to intervene and you have to do it because the customer expects it’. Ali claimed that in general, ‘the customer wants paying for surveillance to pay off’ by having officers arrest people, but ‘customers really cannot demand that officers detain so-and-so many people’. Security officers expressed frustration about customers who ‘do not know what they have bought’, and that they are unaware of the differences between the three types of officers in terms of powers and authority and of the legislative structures ordaining and prescribing certain actions and prohibiting others. Steven noted that ‘in reality, they have just bought ordinary people in work clothes’, to which Martin remarked that ‘we are doing our job in a grey zone’. All officers acknowledged their lack of formal authority and powers and most felt pressured by this situation.

Security officers accompanied during fieldwork found it difficult to resist customers’ wishes, even when it would entail going against the legislation because they claimed that there would always be other companies willing to obey the law less meticulously to please the customer. Not pleasing customers – but adhering to the legislation – would mean losing paying customers.

All officers agreed and emphasised that it was the responsibility of the security company management to explain the differences between the types of officers to customers to assess their needs and ensure a fit, but that company managements do not inform customers about what they can expect from the type of security officers hired. Maria, who was ombudsman (a walking delegate of the security officers’ union), depicted the lack of information given to customers by security company managements as a serious shortcoming resulting in dissatisfied customers when officers deliver the kind of service they are trained for and have the authority to do. Pete argued that company management not ‘being straight and clear’ with customers amounted to ‘selling the illusion of security, the illusion of safety, the illusion of being protected by someone who has the power and authority’. Steve argued that companies in fact consciously refrain from informing their customers in a straight and clear manner as it enabled companies to charge extra.

The company does not explain the differences between a type 1 and a type 2 officer. I think they want it that way. Then you are selling an illusion. The customer does not really know what they need when they put out a tender. It should be the case that when you have won a procurement contract, you reason with the customer about what the customer needs. Instead, everything in addition to the [procurement] agreement costs the customer 10% extra. That’s extra income for the company. It’s a little ugly to do it like that, but, well, it’s a market.

Thus, the dilemma is whether officers adhere to the law (i.e. refrain from ‘removing’ people depicted as unwanted by the buyers of security services) or whether they should act upon the wishes of the customer to help their employer make its customers happy. Maria elaborated on the dilemma:

It can be very tricky indeed. I have always been straight and honest with the customer. ‘You have to take that person out’ – ‘well I’m not allowed to because we have no legal support to do that, that’s how it is’. It’s all about thinking it through: should I oblige the customer if it means I’m committing a crime, so that if that person later reports me, I’ll lose my license and my full-time income. It’s a pretty easy decision, when you see it this way. (Maria, type 1 officer and ombudsman)

The officers apply different strategies to deal with the dilemma. Ombudsman Maria always recommended that colleagues ‘do it by the book’:

When I work as a group leader, I often get questions like ‘what should I do in these cases?’ I usually say, ‘do it by the book’. I shouldn’t have to take shit from my employer when I work according to the law. Then it’s up to my employer to clarify to the customer what kind of service they have bought and will receive. My current employer is not afraid to explain to the customer what [regulations] apply, unlike my previous employers. It’s like night and day really.

Similarly, type 1 officers at the municipally owned and run homeless shelter were also regularly asked by their customer to keep unwanted people out of ‘the shelter territory’. In their formal capacity as type 1 officers, they could only legitimately claim authority within the shelter building itself, but they were also asked to monitor and control the outdoor areas around the building (see also Hansen Löfstrand 2015). Sadie argued that officers should not expel unwanted visitors because ‘we cannot expel people from areas that do not belong to the shelter’. However, Goran and Lenny claimed ‘it’s our duty’ to keep unwanted people out of the larger ‘shelter territory’ because ‘it is also the message from the top boss here’, that is, the customer of their security services. Another colleague, Mark, argued that they do not really have to choose between adhering to regulations and pleasing the customer: it is all about knowing ‘how to use or take advantage of the law’:

Although, as a type 1 officer, I have no other powers than the right of self-defence and to civilian arrests, the public and people who live here do not know that. I always say, ‘now I’ll have to ask you to leave’, loudly, so that others can hear I asked them to leave, if it later comes to a fight.

According to Mark, if unwanted visitors do not adhere to verbal requests, or touch him during his efforts to persuade unwanted visitors to leave the premises, he could in fact (lawfully) use force against them.

The police as last-resort solution

For the homeless shelter residents (in contrast to unwanted visitors), the customer (i.e. the municipal shelter management) had developed a system of punishments for unwanted behaviour. Security officer Robert explained that they were visual to check the level of intoxication because shelter residents ‘are allowed to be drunk, but cannot bring alcohol inside, and cannot be too drunk’. In addition, they were tasked with expelling violent or rowdy shelter residents. However, owing to the lack of formal powers and authority, the security officers at the shelter depended on the assistance of the police to fulfil the customer’s demands; the police were their last-resort solution. On numerous occasions during night shifts, the officers called for police assistance to deal with very intoxicated shelter residents and violence and aggressiveness.

One night, Jenny, one of the two officers working the night shift, and I were sitting in the shelter reception, just after an agitated shelter resident was being transported away with police assistance, when we heard him yelling in protest, ‘fucking sick guard bastards’. Jenny explained that it usually took anywhere from five minutes to an hour and a half until the police arrived, and that sometimes they did not want to come at all:

The police will not come if people are high on drugs; they only take those who are drunk. It is only sometimes when they are under the influence of drugs and extremely noisy that they take them to the drunk tank [the facility where those detained under the Act on the Care of Intoxicated Persons (1976:511) are placed]. Therefore, we have to lie to the police: ‘he refuses to take the breathalyser test and is extremely messy’. (Jenny, type 1 officer)

Thus, officers at the shelter rely on police assistance as a last-resort solution, but cannot be sure of their assistance; at times, they have to resort to ‘lying’ or exaggerating the situation to the police in the hope of receiving assistance. Because they cannot rely on assistance from the police, in instances of, for example, violent fights between shelter residents, they call for help from colleagues working for the same company on the same shift but for other customers around the city, on whose swift assistance they felt they could always rely.

The type 1 officers’ lack of formal powers created a strong sense of community and practices involving doing more than regulations allow. The structure–agency dynamic shaping the role of type 1 officers hence also created an order which was different from the state/market divide as envisaged in legislation concerning private security.

Everyday negotiations redrawing the state/market divide as envisaged in legislation

As shown, the private security industry plays a major role in Sweden, as private security officers are increasingly taking on front-line roles that were formerly the domain of the police. The industry has, as demonstrated, been subjected to a wide range of regulations. In an EU comparative perspective, the quality and comprehensiveness of the Swedish regulatory system are high (Button and Stiernstedt 2018). The study of regulations give a sense of the role played by private security on the ground, but as illustrated in this article, it is important to also study how private security actors on the ground negotiate their way through regulations, company and (public sector) customer expectations producing a more complex social order than the regulations suggest (cf. Leloup and White 2021). To illustrate this process, I have drawn on a theoretical approach that places regulatory structures and actors in a dialectical relationship and an ethnographic dataset. Taken together, this helped me to elucidate the structure–agency dynamic.

I have shown how the structure–agency dynamic shapes the front-line roles of security officers. Although type 3 officers have considerable formal authority and powers, the officers accompanied felt that police as a customer of their services had low expectations and did not trust them to carry out tasks that they were authorised to do, and were asked to refrain from intervening in relation to the public for order maintenance purposes. Similarly, type 2 officers with considerable formal powers, working for the city administration at the city’s cultural festival to help maintain public order, were instructed by company management to refrain from detaining people under the legislation, rather than detaining overly intoxicated persons and handing them over to the police. The company wanted to avoid overburdening the police, fearing loss of credibility in their eyes and bad publicity. In jointly discussing work practices, both officers and managers regularly related to media depictions and stereotypical views of the industry (cf. Hansen Löfstrand 2013, Hansen Löfstrand et al. 2017). Type 1 officers, with no formal powers beyond those of the ordinary citizen, were instead expected by company management and public sector customers to do much more than the current legislation allows, for example, refuse admittance to unwanted visitors to a public area and use force against both shelter residents and unwanted visitors. They felt they could never really rely on the police as their last-resort solution in such cases.

From the perspective of security officers themselves, the public authorities contracting them – their customers – had very little knowledge of what they had bought, and what the legislative framework enabled or prohibited. Officers found it hard to adhere to the private security rules in the legislation. In addition, security officers felt pressured by the company management to please customers, keeping buyers of security services happy by adjusting to their wishes and demands, even if it meant not adhering to Rule of law.

Security officers in Sweden thus negotiate conflicting laws, trends and demands, and public agencies (as customers of their services) do not always abide by public laws. Security companies do not regularly inform their (public sector) customers what duties the hired officers can and may legally perform. Companies fear losing paying customers, or are eager to charge extra retrospectively for services that customers assumed they had already paid for (but later may realise that it required them to contract security officers of another type). However, from the perspective of the shop floor, the security work at times amounted to nothing less than ‘selling an illusion’ of security and safety.

Even if it was never the intention of the Swedish political system or the Swedish Police Authority, the specific structure–agency dynamics and the resulting negotiated order on the ground ultimately redraw the state/market divide as enshrined in legislation by positioning private security officers working for public sector agencies (rather than the police) at the front line of public order maintenance. As mentioned, the most recent Swedish Governmental Investigation (2021) suggests an extensive review of current legislation, entailing a formal delegation of additional police powers, responsibilities and tasks to private security for public order maintenance purposes. Such legislative changes would, then, serve only to retrospectively legitimate and formalise already existing (informal) practices.

This article has illustrated reform processes in society involving policing, the complexity of the negotiated order on the ground, including a gradual (informal) displacement of policing powers and authority. Such developments cannot be inferred from the study of regulations related to private security, and the study reported here hence complements existing studies of the quality of regulatory systems (e.g. Button and Stiernstedt 2018). As shown, also in Sweden – a country depicted as a forerunner in terms of private security regulation and quality – state control of private security is difficult and limited (cf. Shearing and Stenning 1984) but necessary for democratic and social justice purposes (Loader 2000, Lister and Rowe 2016). My ethnographic examples, focused on officer agency in relation to regulations, companies and (public sector) customers – and the Swedish case as a whole – provide qualitative depth to broader discussions about the governance of policing, security provision and public order maintenance in society (e.g. White 2012, Reiner 2015, Lister and Rowe 2016). While the specific structure–agency dynamic illustrated may be unique to Sweden (arguably a contribution to existing policing research in itself), the wider point being made here relates to the power and potential of structure–agency dynamics to (re-)shape security officer roles on the ground and redraw state/market divides in the maintenance of public order.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tessa Diphoorn, Sara Uhnoo and Adam White for reading earlier drafts of this paper and for helpful comments. I would also like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet [Grant Number 421-2012-417].