Assessing private security accountability: a study of Brazil

This article analyses the functioning of the control exercised by private security companies operating in a country barely explored by the literature – Brazil. The hypothesis guiding this study is that internal control systems are set in place when security companies perceive the existence of an institutional environment in which actors exercising external control over private security are capable of making behaviour that fails to comply with public norms more costly to companies than the investments required for setting up internal control systems to prevent such behaviour. In order to assess this hypothesis, two case studies were conducted focusing on two contracts for the provision of security services. Analysis of the cases showed that the way private security organisations hold their employees accountable is strongly affected only by the external control exercised by clients hiring security services on the market. When clients remunerate service provision contracts adequately and are interested in law-abiding conduct, conditions are generated that are conducive to highly structured internal control systems in line with public rules. However, when clients fail to set such standards, the study showed that the external control emanating from public sources is not capable of acting satisfactorily as a last line of defence and course correction. These findings support the pessimistic views present in the scholarly literature that contend that private policing activities are characterised by governance and accountability deficits.