Pere Aslimoski, Ph.D.
Faculty of tourism and hospitality-Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia Sase Gerasimoski, Ph.D.
Faculty of Security-Skopje, Republic of Macedonia Abstract
The Republic of Macedonia has established juridical and institutional framework for realizing the private security. The persons who work in private securing of persons and property often have wide shoulders and necks, strong muscles and other characteristics that evidently express their physical power and preparedness. But, in order to achieve a desirable quality in private securing of persons and property it is needed that they possess developed humanistic and ethical values as well. In this paper, relying on the experiences of the development of private security in the Republic of Macedonia so far, we want to accentuate argumentatively the need for establishing of higher standards for ethical values which the workers working in private security should possess. We point out to the indispensable law according to which the more it is insisting on the ethical dimension in private security, the more the possibilities for alienation in this activity, abusing and overstepping of the authorizations, infringement of the basic human rights and freedoms, authority, dignity and intimacy of the persons and other values are confining.
Keywords: ethics, private security, basic human rights and freedoms
Introduction
The private security, viewed historically, is not a new phenomenon, but, in an extent to which it’s been developed nowadays represents a significant security phenomenon and strong factor within the security system of contemporary states. In its essence, no matter how paradoxically it may look prima facie, the private security is older historical phenomenon than public and state security and actually it precedes them. However, the private security experiences its real rise in the last couple of decades, first in U.S.A. and in Canada and then in Europe, Australia and South Africa especially, meaning that nowadays, only in Europe over one million people work in the private security sector (van Buuren & den Boer, 2009: 8; van Steden &
Sarre, 2007: 222). The private security in the Republic of Macedonia has been developing within the last two decades of which from 2000 onwards in an organized manner and with legal regulation. According to the nature of work it exerts, the private security is a pretty sensitive and delicate security activity that encompasses a multitude of ethical and moral issues. In actual fact, the one that has been implied under the notion of privatizing the private security as an entirety of all abnormalities in its work, in most part is owing to the misunderstanding and inconsistent implementation of the moral and legal norms in regulating and realizing the activity (Gerasimoski, 2007: 32- 39; Gerasimoski, 2011: 331). There’s an undivided belief among the theorists and entities who work in the private security that the ethical component of the work has been paid very little and that it’s been considered as something as secondary and sporadic that gains on importance every time when a serious case of privatizing the private security is to be occurred. It is of special interest the fact that the essence of the private security is to act preventively and reactively which implies that without an adequate ethical principles and moral behavior the private security is not possible. In a case of absence of neglecting of the ethics and morals in the private security we cannot talk of realizing the security and social function of the private security subsystem.
Today, there’s an obvious need for studying ethics within the private security concerning the last developments in this sphere domestically, thus make the need for studying ethics and implementation of the moral norms more prevalent. The perplexed relations that exist in the sphere of private security, irrespective of the fact of their regulation with comprehensive legal norms, nevertheless, implies an extensive field of relations that do not depend so much on the legal framework, but rather on ethics. These are the relations that primarily depend on the general morals of the community, the morals of the individuals, the morals within certain sphere (in this case security), i.e., the moral setting of the subsystem of private security, moral predispositions, characteristics and values of the human potential within the private security etc. The aim of scientific study of the ethics and morals within private security is to point out to the need of permanent elevation of the ethics and moral behavior in this sphere on scientific, objective and real grounds, as well as to propose scientifically based recommendations, proposals and solutions for overcoming the problems in the private security subsystem. This is as much important as it is known that the private security, as an activity that provides security services to clients, must continuously be improved qualitatively in order to justify the need for its existence within the security system. This challenge is not at all easy, having in mind that the private security has been constantly faced in front of the needs of the market
and the public interest. In addition, the ethics permeates all relations between the subjects that are directly or indirectly involved in private security.
Ethics, Moral Behavior and Professional Ethics
Being ethical is not a small thing, especially nowadays. Society and culture
in which we are living are changing rapidly and even the value and normative sphere which are the most stable of all nonmaterial elements of culture are affected to a degree where we can doubt in their normativity. There are serious indicators that show substantial shift in values which are becoming more ambivalent, less stable and liquid, as well as ethical and moral values which seem to become relativized. Of course, this is not at all happy development of affairs, but it surely denotes the fundamental changes that shape the social and cultural environment in which we live. The complex and contradictory notion of globalization (in actual fact glocalization), the postmodern thinking and lifestyle and neoliberal doctrine and practice jointly contribute towards our everyday, that is becoming as fluid as no other period in human history so far. Speaking of ethics and morals, we should try do define them in a way as they should be, both understand and practiced, since they are normative and exclusive by their nature, so any other understanding and practicing than that could actually disfigure them and make them socially and culturally senseless. Ethics and morals share the same ground, but, they are not the same. They are both alluding to good as value and good behavior which leads to attainment of most of the socio-cultural values. But, although ethics and morals are used nearly as synonyms in everyday speech, they are well differentiated in science. Thus, ethics means scientific and philosophical discipline that studies morals, while morals imply practical ethical behavior in everyday life, i.e., good behavior and conduct. Morals and values make one indivisible whole, where morals is considered as means, while values as goals that can be reached through observing of moral norms (Tanovic, 1978: 37).The morals determine the ways of good behavior that can lead to realization of values. Morals is represented through moral norms created by each socio-cultural environment, whether it is a case with smaller or larger socio-cultural groups and communities. Once the moral norms are set, they are respected by the members or the group, and though there’s no formal sanction of not observing them, each socio-cultural group and community has developed mechanisms that react towards those who are not respecting them. This has been done by informal social sanctions that represent disapproving stance and behavior of the rest of the group or community to the one that breaks the unwritten moral norms. In this respect, the morals can be even most effective in most situations of preventing destructions, since
their power lies in fear of the reaction of others which are perceived as socially more effective than the fear of laws which are more distanced through the mechanisms of state and authority.
The morals is effectuated through everyday human relations, communications and interactions. They are the contents of socio-cultural relations between individuals and groups. Concerning the private security, the morals as moral behavior and conduct can be found in different kinds or relations between the private providers of security entities (private security companies for securing persons and property and private detective agencies) and their clients, between private security entities and state/public security institutions, between private security entities and other social groups and individuals (represent of civilian security sectors), as well as between private security entities in their professional and human relations. It is understood that being moral and acting morally is not only aimed at good behavior and conduct related to values in human relations, but also related to good behavior and conduct to material and other spiritual values which are socially agreed and accepted. This is because of the fact that they are deemed by the society as valuable and meaningful and though they are not directly addressed to human values, they represent the values that human societies attribute to these phenomena and objects. Since they are treated as values for society, it is supposed that they have to be reached by observing certain moral norms as means for attaining the values. Moral norms are attached to behavior and they are the same time qualitative and quantitative measures of whether certain behavior is sufficient and socially acceptable to contribute towards attaining certain socio-cultural values. Thus, for instance, being moral in private security means acting according to some agreed moral norms and values that’ll inevitably make the aimed values achieved. This is supposed to be done through the mechanisms of so called informal social rules or value-normative order and sometimes even written in Codes of ethical conduct as professional ethics, although if they are written they are closer to the laws, even their achievement is not guaranteed by the state. The morals is most effective if it is unwritten, because it is realized by addressing to human conscience, which has been built through the process of socialization and internalizing the socio-cultural value and normative order. Otherwise, the written form of professional ethics is also more close to deontology, which, in its essence is more lawful than moral. The deontology itself is defined as science of duty and moral obligations that are practiced between the employees in certain professions, among them, most notably and most specifically, the security profession (Mikunovik, 1995: 153; Murgoski, 2005:142). It is indispensable to mention and not to be forgotten that there can be no values without morals, i.e. the values cannot be neither defined, nor envisaged and achieved in practice.
Ethics and Moral Behavior in the Private Security
The basic ethical creeds are to be found in old Chinese, Christian medieval, as well as German classical idealist philosophy. For instance, Confucius writes: “Tse-Kung asked: ‘Is there any rule that can serve for entire life?’ The teacher said: ‘Isn’t the mutuality that word? That which is not to be done to you by others, you shouldn’t be doing to the others’” (Confucius, 1994:174). Also, we found the other basic principle of ethics in Kantian ethical writings where ethics is considered as imperative. Kant says: “Act towards the others so that you could wish your behavior become universal” (Shopenhauer, 1998: 176-186; Mekintair, 2004, 251).
The moral values are values by themselves, autonomous, autochthonous, auto-telic (self-aimed) and they are not derived from any other value (Lukic, 1976: 112; Kloskovska, 2001: 125). Moral behavior and conduct are by their very nature intrinsic to socio-cultural relations and acting morally receives wide social acceptance. People who act morally are considered to be conscious enough to understand the good in every act and, the opposite of that, to be aware of what is wrong and to restrain from acting badly. As we can see, the morals is an exclusive category in terms of its nominal and real determination, meaning that there can only be a defined system of moral norms that determine the morals in given time, space and in given societies telling them what is considered right and what wrong, or, between two morals pretending to be morals in a right sense, one is always right, the other wrong (Mabbot, 1981: 87). Surely, the right one is the one that enjoys wide social acceptance. Importantly enough, because the morals is created according to the values that are respected in certain time, space and society, it means that when those values change, the morals also changes with them since they are, as we mentioned earlier, means for reaching the values. That implies that the morals is dynamic category and that it changes and evolves. Thus, today’s morals is, for instance, more relativized than the morals in modern societies owing to the relativized and atomized socio- cultural values, or, as Alaisdair Mcyntire puts, “people see and think about values and norms more in terms of divisions than entirety” (Mekintair, 1998: 269).
The ethics in the private security domestically as well as worldly is understood as moral practice (moral behavior and conduct) in accordance with certain general, but also special ethical principles of behavior which are basically unwritten, but also written in the form of Codes of professional ethics which systematize the professional morals in the sphere of private security (Stajic, Mijalkovic, Stanarevic, 2004: 183). Codes of professional ethics for private security have been adopted within Europe by CoESS and
UNI Europa in 2003 (CoESS & UNI Europa, 2003: 1-7). Regionally, SEESAC has adopted Code of conduct for the private security companies in Sarajevo in 2006, which refers to the countries of South Eastern Europe (SEESAC, 2003: 1-6). The Chamber of Republic of Macedonia for securing persons and property has adopted Code of professional ethics for employees in the securing persons and property activity in 2005, which is one supposition for rising the ethics and morals in the sphere of private security (Group of authors, 2005: 1). This is due to the fact that the morals is the strongest and most effective when internalized and is part of the structure and behavior of the person. The aim of formulating the Codes of professional ethics in written form is to make the entities within the private security sphere aware, informed and stimulated about the existence of the ethical principles and moral behavior. At the same time, the existence of the Codes of ethics in the private security points out to the insufficient level of adoption of the general culture, security culture, omissions, flaws and shortcomings in the process of socialization. With the aim of providing high quality of work within the private security subsystem, it must not be allowed working of persons who are not aware with the ethical dimension of living in general and in private security especially. The awareness for ethics and morals, as well as their consistent implementation on work has to be a condition sine qua non (the inevitable condition) in the private security, not something sporadic, secondary or less important. Regarding the ethical principles on which work within the private security subsystem should be based, the science distinguishes several. We could sublimate the following ethical principles:
- Professionalism-denotes the quality of performing the working tasks (Temkov, 2009: 235). The professional morals is seen as a rigid ethical system, that is being respected not only as the morals, but also partly as the laws since it has been in some way prescribed in the written Codes of professional ethics. The professionalism, in ethical sense of the word, also implies acceptance of the works and working tasks that can be performed in the moment with all disposable personnel and material means and nothing more than that (Temkov, 2009: 239);
- Fairness and equality-understands fair, respectful and equal treatment of the clients, but also fair, respectful and equal relation towards other entities within the security system as well as colleagues. Here we talk about the existence of the internalized sense of fairness and equality that implies the existence of measure for equality while conducting towards the other entities with whom the given person or entity cooperates professionally and towards whom
the security officer or private detective are also socially responsible (Fischer, Halibozek, Green, 2008: 288; Cvetkovski, 2011: 66-71); - Responsibility-implies performing the works in the private security
sector in accordance with the requirements and expectations of society, public and users of security services. Also, responsibility understands developed awareness for the need of feed-back of the entities that work in the private security towards all the others directly or indirectly affected by their work;
- Conspiracy and discretion-conspiracy refers to the secrecy of all security information related with quality and efficacious exerting of security plans and carrying out the security actions. Discretion refers to wary, careful and adequate disposal with data and information, protection and preventing the publication of secret and confidential information of the clients and other persons with the aim of protecting the basic human rights and freedoms of the person, intimacy, subjectivity and privacy (Tumanovski et al., 2004: 135); - Efficaciousness-signifies the exertion of the working tasks with
minimum engaged means and maximum work effect, thus always not being at the detriment of the good (moral) behavior. In actual fact, the efficaciousness together with the social responsibility and acceptability determine the optimization in the work of the private security subsystem (Dempsey, 2011: 25-26).
Moral Functions in the Private Security
Within the sphere of private security there’s a pretty vast field of sensitive relations connected with the basic human rights and freedoms, subjectivity, intimacy and privacy, honor, reputation and dignity of the people and other values that have accentuated, and in some cases, exceptional moral dimension. The relations within private security connected with these values and the values alike them are being conditioned, first of all, with the development of the general culture, value orientation towards basic values (human life, peace, freedom, democracy etc.), security culture as culture for security, humanism, solidarity, traditions and so on (Gerasimovski, 2011: 363). In addition, the morals as a direct ethical practice exerts numerous and important social and security influences that are frequently defined through the moral functions. We will list the following moral functions as the most important in the private security:
- Assumption for strengthening of legal norms within the sphere of
private security; The moral values, basically, are a constituent part
law. Therefrom, it is assumed that inasmuch as the moral norms are being present in a greater extent within the legal regulation in the sphere of private security, it will be more respected, and with that, the ethics and morals will gain in significance;
- Filling out the legal void within the sphere of private security;