Lifelong Learning in Private Security - New Challenges

Abstract

The last year has seen much activity in preparing the new Act on Private Security, which should be coming in force in early 2020. One of the main reasons for the legislator to pass the new law is to improve the implementation of physical and technical protection in practice, to improve the quality of regulation, and to improve the private protection sector in the context of current security threats. Also, the inevitability of inclusion of private protection in the homeland security system is an additional reason for further modernization, which implies the parallel increase in quality of private security services in the Republic of Croatia. One of the expected goals is to further increase the participation of private security in locations with increased security risk in a partnership between public and private security, which is a trend in EU countries. In this regard, a new category of security professional is proposed, which would be further educated by experienced professionals and, under the new Act on Private Security, entrusted with the most responsible and complex tasks of private security. However, in the current conditions in the Croatian private security sector, which currently lacks almost 25% of trained professionals, in which negative staff selection has been present for over 5 years, with enormous fluctuation of staff, and sector wide minimum wages, it is important to ask whether is the new security guard definition just a different name and form, or does it bring new content. This paper will present a part of the research into private security professionals' attitudes towards lifelong learning. The aim of this paper is to: determine the attitudes of guards and security guards on lifelong learning, ways in which guards and security guards participate in the training process, their motivational factors for acquiring new knowledge and barriers to training and ultimately assess the benefits of training.