The new keys to the city: uploading corporate security and threat discourse into Canadian municipal governments

We examine the establishment of municipal corporate security (MCS) departments in 16 of Canada’s most populated cities. Exploring its upload into municipal governments by drawing on analysis of freedom of information requests, municipal government documents, and interviews, we demonstrate how MCS ha...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Walby, Kevin 1981- (Author) ; Lippert, Randy 1966- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2012
In: Crime, law and social change
Year: 2012, Volume: 58, Issue: 4, Pages: 437-455
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:We examine the establishment of municipal corporate security (MCS) departments in 16 of Canada’s most populated cities. Exploring its upload into municipal governments by drawing on analysis of freedom of information requests, municipal government documents, and interviews, we demonstrate how MCS has become part of urban policing and security networks, as well as how knowledge and technology from the private security and insurance industries is transferred into municipal government through MCS. Engaging with sociologies of networked security governance, security consumption, and risk management, we argue that MCS contributes to the securitization of cities through asset protection, risk and liability management, employee surveillance, and order maintenance. We discuss how the work of MCS is animated by a discourse of urban threat, showing how MCS practices in Canadian cities blur the line between policing and securitization. In conclusion, we consider the implications of our analysis of MCS for sociological understandings of policing, security, and public accountability.
Item Description:Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 453-455
ISSN:1573-0751
DOI:10.1007/s10611-012-9395-9