Introduction
The government of USA is putting in every effort into ensuring security and safety of the country from crime and terrorism. The public agencies responsible for law enforcement continue engaging in their normal activities of preventing and responding to criminal activities. They are also aided by private security agencies, who engage in equally similar activities. In the US, the estimated number of private security entities is 90,000 with a total of 2 million officers in the service (Cooke, 2014). Private security service providers have been recognized for being the first individuals who respond to a security situation, for example, during the 11 September 2001, it was private security entity who was the first people to arrive at the scene. Despite their magnificent efforts to provide security services to the people of US, their efforts have been recognized by a small number of people. However, a combined effort from both the federal and private security organizations is critical in ensuring that the entire population of American lives with the true sense of security and safety. This is because the emergence and the widespread use of the internet have brought new challenges related to crime and terrorism. The organization of criminal and terrorists activities becoming more sophisticated, thus, the federal, local and state security agencies need to come up with better tactics and strategies to overcome these challenges. This includes the use of decentralized and more robust intelligence services from all these security agencies. This paper discusses the situation of security in the USA by exploring the different entities of security, levels of which security are offered challenges as well as other issues that are related to these security agencies in the United States of America.
Differing goals and objectives of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies
Despite the fact that all the law enforcing agencies in the United States has a common objective of ensuring the security and safety of people within the boundaries of America, the main objectives of these agencies have a slight difference (Cochrun, 2014). The main objective of federal law enforcement agency is to ensure safety and the security of the US in relation to threats that may be coming from within or outside the boundaries of the United States of America. The federal agencies have larger jurisdiction than the rest of the agencies, for example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). On the other hand, the main objective of state law enforcement agencies is to ensure homeland security, within the boundaries of the US. They are second in jurisdiction as they take care of security issues inside the US. Lastly is the local law enforcement agencies that take care of specific local areas, for example, a given state. They only have jurisdiction of maintaining law and order within the given states.
Challenges facing federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies
There are several challenges that the above security agencies face while in their line of duty. Firstly, ensuring the national security in the face of terrorism is one of the major challenges at the center of this question (Cooke, 2006). Attack from terrorist poses a great threat to the US homeland security, not to mention the entire world. The US National Counter Terrorism Center was able to identify over 10, 000 incidences of terrorism with a total number of 57, 500 casualties in the year 2011. This makes the prevention of a terrorist attack in the US a top priority of these agencies. Examples of these agencies include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). This situation is further made worse by the difficulty of sharing critical information relating to the activities of terrorist. These departments also need to share their information in a confidential manner.
Another challenge that these entities have to deal with is the assurance of cyber security. This is because the entire cyber system is a very critical tool in the defense units in the USA; therefore, it ought to be well taken care-of. The US secretary of Defense released a statement showing that the country is very vulnerable to activities of hackers (Cooke, 2006). He also added that the risks of cyber-criminal activities have increased six fold, to 680% from the year 2006 to the year 2011. These departments, therefore, have a giant task of containing this menace by dealing with the challenges that aim deterring, preventing and responding to insecurity incidents that target the entire cyber system of the United States. This requires a huge amount of funding, resource allocation and high level of intelligence since the acts of cyber-crime are increasingly becoming more complex.
The major aim of these security agencies is to prevent any form of criminal activity as well as responding to events of insecurity. Therefore, they must all work together and with a great extent of collaboration for a successful achievement of security within the boundaries of the United States. However, achieving of this proper co-ordination among all the above agencies has proven to be a tall order. There is a lack of willingness to share intelligence information, personnel as well as resources among these entities (Cooke, 2006). One of the significant causes of lack of co-ordination between these agencies is the overlapping jurisdiction within the US. There are areas of jurisdiction that are controlled by the federal agencies, however, sometimes the need for help and maintenance of high standards of security within the boundaries may make one agency go overboard it jurisdiction.
Objectives of probation, parole, and correctional organizations in regard to public safety and individual rights
In each and every society, there are individual who is prone for infringing the basic rights of other individuals. There are also those who commit minor criminal activities. In order to counter these events, there are probation, parole and correctional facilities where such offenders are taken care of. These facilities are put in place with the following objectives. One of the objectives of the above facilities is to create and maintain safety and the security of members of the public via supervising adult felons in the society (Erickson & Mayer, 2011). These entities have gotten well trained probation officers who handle general criminal offenders, for example, sex offenders. Probation facilities are created to facilitate the supervision of sex offenders. They do this by developing an inter-agency sex offenders working group in order to improve the practices as well as the policies, which are meant to manage sex offenders, provide assistances to the victims of sexual abuse, as well as protecting those vulnerable to abuse.
The probation and parole facilities also have the objective of enhancing communication with the system of crime and justice (ibid). This is in order to help in ensuring security and safety in all states. This is made possible through increasingly educating the community on how to offer help to the victims, and by offering correctional measures for offenders. Correctional facilities are also meant to change the behavior of victims through guidance and counseling as well as imparting them with new knowledge and skills to use after completing the correction term.
The privatization of government services with respect to policing, courts, and corrections
Privatization of policing, courts and correctional services means that the activities of financing and controlling of all operations regarding these facilities are done by private entities and not by the public government (Forst, 2008). Privatization of these services led to the number of individuals employed in private security firms to be more than those who are in public security entities. Privatization of these services came about because of the limited capacity of the government alone to ensure the high standard of security needed in USA. Therefore, this has improved the general phase of security in the US. It also promotes healthy competition among security firms, information sharing and the recognition of the value of specialization in the economy. However, it may result in a negative perception of the public about swearing in officers as the community will be ignoring their services. This is because the private security; though limited to specific roles, have a number of duties that are similar to those of public security entities. Private securities are those guards who are hired by other private businesses, mall, and organizations in order to offer protection to people, information, property or assets (ibid). Despite their ability to offer quality security services in the aforementioned areas, the roles of private security are limited to observation, reporting as well as deterring of criminal activities. They are also not allowed forcefully to arrest anyone.
Reference
Cochrun, C. (2014). What Are the Differences Between Private & Public Sector Security? Retrieved 4
April 2014. From,http://www.ehow.com/about_5106799_differences-private-public-sector-security.html
Retrieved 4 April 2014. From, http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1048&issue_id=112006
Erickson, G., S., & Mayer, A., M. (2011). Changing today’s Law Enforcement Culture to Face
21st-Century Threats. Retrieved 4 April 2014. From,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/06/changing-todays-law-enforcement-culture-to-face-21st-century-threats
Forst, B. (2000). The Privatization and Civilization of Policing: Journal of Boundary Changes in
Criminal Justice. Vol. 2, No. 1. pp. 19-70.
Security Watch. (2008). The Changing Role of Private Security. Retrieved 4 April 2014. From,
http://www.securityinfowatch.com/article/10517289/the-changing-role-of-private-security
