The security sector is often maligned for its failings. Yet, it is playing an increasingly important role in ensuring public safety and security alongside the police and military – something that is increasingly more evident from recent media coverage.
This new essay reflects on the contributions of this growing industry through the lens of social cohesion. How does public safety facilitate social cohesion and how does the protection of public spaces build social connection and community strength?
While the impetus for these reflections arose some time before the April Bondi Junction stabbings, the attack underscored the importance of the security sector in ensuring public spaces are open, accessible and safe. Australia’s security officers are crucial to these efforts.
Sometimes it takes an incident as grave as the Bondi Junction incident to highlight the unseen work of the men and women who are increasingly bearing the responsibility for keeping us safe. Many of these individuals are new Australians, carrying out their work with dedication in the place they have decided to call home. Their work makes a crucial contribution to our social cohesion and, as we have seen recently, often involves considerable risk.
Today on Wednesday 24 July 2024 – International Security Officers’ Day, let us recognise the work of security officers all across Australia.
About the Author
Trish Prentice is a qualitative researcher with a particular interest in social cohesion. She has worked in Australia and overseas in the government, academic, corporate and not-for-profit sectors, including in Cairo, Egypt, working for an organisation specialising in Arab-West Understanding and in Geneva, Switzerland for a human rights group with United Nations Special Consultative status. Trish holds degrees in Education and Law and has managed research projects in Indonesia, Singapore, Pakistan and Australia. She has written on a variety of topics for academic and general audiences. Trish joined the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute in 2020.
