The Privatization of Security: Lessons from Iraq

Images of private forces in Iraq—killed and mutilated in Fallujah, implicated in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and shooting up civilian vehicles—have provided a dramatic illustration of the role private security companies (pscs) now play in U.S. military operations. Though the United States’ use of contractors on the battlefield is not entirely new, the increased number of contractors deployed and the use of private security forces to perform an escalating number of tasks has created a new environment that poses important trade-offs for U.S. policy and military effectiveness and for U.S. relations with other states. This article outlines the history of U.S. contractors on the battlefield, compares that with the use of private security in Iraq, discusses the benefits and risks associated with their use, and proposes some trade-offs that decision-makers in the United States should consider while contemplating their use in the future.     

Police stress, state-trait anxiety, and stressors among U.S. Marshals

Unlike previous studies on stress in local police officers, this study was unique in that it used Deputy U.S. Marshals as the population pool. This study replicated the study conducted by Storch and Panzarella (1996) who determined stress levels and stressors of police officers. A standardized inventory of stress was combined with a questionnaire about job stressors, individual job and career variables, and personal variables. One hundred Deputy U.S. Marshals from offices across the country responded to an anonymous survey. Generally, deputies scored low on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983). The main stressors identified by the respondents were related to organizational variables, i.e., problems with management, bad bosses, and work environment. More stress was experienced by deputies who were inclined to think about job-related illnesses or being injured while on duty, those who were facing retirement, and those who disliked their current assignments.     

Moving into and out of poor urban areas

Newly available geographical information from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is used to estimate a variety of relationships involving high-poverty metropolitan census tracts. The longitudinal data from the PSID show a great deal of geographical mobility even for persistently poor adults, with as many as one fourth of certain groups of these entering and leaving poor urban census tracts in a year. At the same time, solution of the transition matrices for various groups—whites and blacks of various income classes, in families with and without children, living in different types of census tracts—in the early 1980s shows the gradual emptying out of poor urban tracts, particularly of whites and blacks in families without children. As a consequence, despite the great degree of geographical “churning,” poor urban areas gradually become poorer, blacker, and the home of a larger share of black families with children. Some of these aggregate trends had been noticed by researchers comparing these areas in the 1970 and 1980 censuses; our more up-to-date results demonstrate the relationships between the micro and macro data.