• Korean Security Journal
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• no.47
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• pp.7-36
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• 2016

The security providers industry, often referred to as an industry with unconfined growth ceiling, has entered a remarkable mass-growth phase since the 1980. In the modern era, private-sector security increasingly cover functions relating to general security awareness (including counter-terrorism) in partnership with State bodies, and the scale of operations continue to accelerate, relative to the expanding roles. In the era of pluralisation of policing, there has been widening efforts pursued to develop a range of regulatory strategies internationally in order to manage such growth and development. To date, in South Korea, a diverse set of industry review studies have been conducted. However, the analyses have been conventionally confined to North America, Britain, Germany and Japan, while developments in other world regions remain unassessed. This article is intended to inform the drivers and determinants of regulatory reforms in Australia, and examine the effectiveness of the main pillars of licensing innovations. Over the past decades, the Australian regime has undergone a wave of reforms in response to emerging issues, and in recognition of the industry as a 'public good' due to underpopulation density and the resulting security challenges. The focus of review in this study was on providing a detailed review of the regulatory approach taken by Australia that has expanded police-private security co-operation since the 1980s. The emphasis was on examining the core pillars of risk management strategies and oversight practices progressed to date and evaluating areas of possible improvement in regulation relative to South Korea. Overall, this study has identified three key features of Australian regime: (1) close checks on questionable close associates (including fingerprinting), (2) power of inspection and seizure without search warrant, (3) the 'three strikes' scheme. The rise of the private security presence in day-to-day policing operations means that industry warrant some intervening government-sponsored initiative. The overall lessons learnt from the Australian case was taken into account in determining the following checks and balances that would provide the ideal setting for the best-practice arrangement: (1) regulatory measure should be evaluated against a set of well-defined indicators, such as the merits of different enforcement tools for each given risk, (2) information about regulatory impacts should be analysed by a specialist research institute, (3) regulators should be innovative in applying a range of strategies available to them by employing a mixture of compliance promotional strategies, and adjust the mix as required.