Archive for April, 2011

Date: April 22nd, 2011
Cate: Healthcare Security

Violence Prevention & Response Toolkit

The Emergency Nurses Association created a Workplace Violence Toolkit designed specifically for the emergency department managers and is also useful for security professionals and others responsible for managing violence in the emergency department.

Did you know that workplace violence accounts for approximately 900 deaths and 1.7 millions non-fatal assaults each year in the United States? This is a serious issue and ENA applauds the effort to evaluate your own emergency department and develop measures to improve the safety and security of your staff and patients. Our workplace violence toolkit provides you with all the resources you need to:

- Understand the issue of emergency department workplace violence

- Evaluate your emergency department’s present status

- Describe the desired outcomes for your emergency department

- Design a practical action plan that will help you achieve these outcomes and

- Evaluate how your plan is working and what to do next

This toolkit, developed by ENA leadership and your peers, offers practical solutions to the problem of violence in emergency departments all across the country. You will be provided with the resources to address this issue at all levels of the institution such as hospital administration, division or department management, educators and staff. The templates and tools provided an easy step by step procedure for customizing a violence prevention plan that will meet the needs of your department. We will also provide you with templates for correspondence and reporting so your efforts can be documented and released to those stakeholders that need to know the positive steps you are taking to provide a safe environment for employees and patients.

Emergency Nurses Association

Date: April 15th, 2011
Cate: Healthcare Security

Hospital staff push back after police officers are replaced with security officers

“Nurses at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul are sounding alarms over a change in emergency room security staff. In January, the hospital stopped using off-duty police officers to provide security seven nights per week in the emergency room. Instead, it handed the duty to hospital security guards on Sunday through Wednesday evenings.” Some say it increases risk.

Twin Cities Pioneer Press article

Date: April 15th, 2011
Cate: Healthcare Security

Woman poses as doctor, diagnoses patients

A lack of security policy or a lack of policy enforcement?

Toronto Globe Article

Date: April 14th, 2011
Cate: Uncategorized

NCJRS posts Security 101 document

The National Criminal Justice Reference Service recently published a literature review and secondary data analysis entitled, “The Private Security Industry: A Review of the Definitions, Available Data Sources, and Paths Moving Forward.”

The Private Security Industry

Executive Summary:

The private security industry is a crucial component of security and safety in the United States and abroad. Today, private security is responsible not only for protecting many of the nation‘s institutions and critical infrastructure systems, but also for protecting intellectual property and sensitive corporate information. U.S. companies also rely heavily on private security for a wide range of functions, including protecting employees and property, conducting investigations, performing pre-employment screening, providing information technology security, and many other functions.

In the past four decades, a series of reports and studies have examined private security agencies and personnel (i.e., Kakalik & Wildhorn, 1971a, 1971b, 1971c, 1971d; Cunningham, Taylor, & Hallcrest Systems, Inc., 1985; Cunningham, Strauchs, Van Meter, & Hallcrest Systems, Inc., 1990). These studies helped redefine the roles of private security and documented the growth and trends in the industry as a whole. However, these studies have become outdated, and there continues to be a significant need for more detailed and timely information, especially when considering the increasing range of roles played by private security. Moreover, the survey methodologies employed by some prior data collection efforts have produced data that are not generalizable to the population or that are potentially subject to nonresponse bias. Therefore, how well one can use these sources to make inference to private security as a whole is unknown. Currently, there is no existing data source that provides detailed information about private security—beyond basic demographics—that is not methodologically flawed due to the design or high nonresponse rates.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), an independent statistical agency located within the U.S. Department of Justice, launched a design project to assess the feasibility of conducting a National Private Security Survey (NPSS). This report was developed as part of the design work. It provides a review of the literature on private security, including major trends, demographics, collaborations with law enforcement, budgeting and licensing, legal authority and powers within private security, and security operations. The report also presents an analysis of the availability and quality of secondary data on private security including a review of all available private security data from government sources, commercial sources, and research or academic sources. As part of this review, the report examines the methodology used to collect data on the private security industry and provides an assessment of the data quality.

The review suggests that suitable data are available on certain aspects of the private security industry. However, some components of the private security industry have not been studied in detail, while others have been studied but the existing data are either inconsistent or outdated. Based on the review, the following conclusions were generated:

1) Employee Demographics. Overall, high-quality demographic data have been collected in existing surveys; however, variations in the survey methodology and definitions of private security across these surveys produced some discrepancies in the estimates.

2) Budgeting and licensing. Budgeting and licensing information on contract security firms was substantial, compared to information for companies with a proprietary security force.

3) Private security powers. An insufficient amount of comprehensive data has been collected on private security powers; therefore, there is a significant need for information in this area.

4) Security operations. One of two secondary data sources provided information on security operations topics. Although one of the survey designs was methodologically sound, the response rate created a potential for biased estimates.

As a result of these findings, we offer the following recommendations for the design and implementation of a national survey of the private security industry:

1) Develop a clear definition of private security. When conducting a national data collection effort such as the NPSS, a succinct definition of private security should be developed with an understanding that the definition used may result in the collection of data that are different from those currently available.

2) Cover a broad range of topics. A targeted, national study of the private security industry should cover a broad range of topics in order to minimize any potential measurement error caused by combining data from multiple sources that use different definitions of private security. Therefore, it is important that a future study not only fill in the recognized information gaps on private security (e.g., private security powers and security operations), but also obtain reliable and updated statistics, such as employee demographics, that are sufficiently covered by other surveys.

3) Utilize a rigorous data collection methodology. Future studies should also seek to address methodological and response rate challenges that affected past data collection efforts. This should include the development of a national sampling frame that provides more representative coverage of the companies to which inference will be drawn. Furthermore, procedures must include non-response follow-up to ensure a reasonable response rate.

4) Conduct the survey periodically. Studies that examine private security consistently over time would provide a significant advantage. This could be achieved either by examining a cohort of companies over time or drawing a new nationally representative sample of companies each time the data collection is fielded. Regardless of the approach, a set of studies conducted over time will better inform how private security changes in the size and characteristics of the industry, as well as the changing role and function of private security in the United States. These trends in the industry have both economic and policy implications.

In summary, this report provides recommendations for how future data collection efforts, such as the NPSS, can build on past efforts to increase knowledge of the private security industry and yield higher quality and more consistent data over time. The relevance of private security to our criminal justice system and to our nation‘s safety and security requires that we collect more consistent and timely information on the private security industry. This should include tracking of the functions and roles of private security as well as their intersection with policing, corrections, homeland security, and other relevant areas. By building on and improving upon past data collection efforts, we can ensure that the information that is collected is accurate, generalizable, and useful to the private security field, as well as to federal agencies and policymakers, and others with an interest in private security data.

Date: April 1st, 2011
Cate: Crime Prevention, Security

The Security Continuum

The Security Continuum includes four distinct security strategies – - – Deterrence, Prevention, Mitigation, and Investigation.

Deterrence is designed to discourage criminals by increasing their risks, promoting a sense of security, and instilling doubt. A criminal who chooses not to commit a crime at your facility because of existing security measures is an example of criminal who has been deterred.

Prevention is the inability or increased difficulty to commit a crime because of security measures in place to protect an asset. A criminal who is unable to break into a safe is an example of prevention.

Mitigation is the act of intervening in a crime to consequences of the crime once underway. A security officer stopping a shoplifter at the door after the theft has been committed is an example of mitigation.

Investigation is the study of the crime, after it has been committed, to identify the perpetrator and bring him/her to justice. Providing camera surveillance to law enforcement is a common first step of an investigation.

The Security Continuum dictates that:

- Not all crimes can be deterred

- More can be prevented

- Even more can be mitigated

- All can be investigated

As most security professionals know, measuring deterrence and prevention is difficult at best. Mitigation and Investigation are far easier to measure and many organizations capture this data on a regular basis. The problem with driving a security program solely with the easy-to-measure metrics is that subsequent remedial measures focus on further enhancements to mitigation and investigation measures (the known metrics). For example, a facility that was unable to prevent a crime may spend significant resources on cameras to aid investigations, but insufficient measures which could have deterred or prevented the crime (such as good security procedures or access controls). Alternatively, the organization may focus on the precise vulnerabilities that were exploited for the crime which occurred. For example, if a safe was removed from the premises, the organization may replace the safe with a floor-bolted model, but disregard the building’s weak door controls which allowed the criminal access to the safe.

Which part of the Security Continuum is your program emphasizing?