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Abstract

This report is designed to provide guidance to security managers as they plan for the security needs and challenges of the coming decade. It presents demographic and crime trend projections, highlighting expected increases in the share of older Americans, the racial and ethnic diversity of the population, and the incidence of fraud, organized retail crime, and workplace violence. The report then summarizes roundtable discussion groups among security managers to solicit their perspectives on how these trends will affect safety and security in their industries. Recommendations for strategies to offset the negative impact of these trends are included throughout the document.

Introduction

Over the past few decades, the security industry has made great advances in constructing industry standards, developing new technologies to address existing concerns, and adapting to new social realities. Despite these developments, few systematic reviews exist that document future demographic and crime trends. Even more scarce are studies that explore how such trends might guide the industry toward measures that anticipate and offset the security threats that they impose, while capitalizing on those trends that might enhance and improve the industry’s efficiency and effectiveness. To address this issue, the ASIS International Foundation contracted the Urban Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan social policy and economic research organization, to conduct a study on how industries can better prepare for emerging security issues based upon these trends.

The purpose of this study is to identify how emerging trends might influence the security of various industries and what industries can do, from a planning perspective, by way of preparation and prevention. This is best accomplished by obtaining the perspectives of security experts regarding trends of crime, demography, and technology. Specifically, this research set out to:

• Learn how business, demographic, crime, and technology trends vary based on security industry sector (such as insurance, service, transportation, or retail services) and security threat;
• Determine what these trends suggest about future security challenges, investments, and resource needs; and
• Identify promising strategies and tactics the security industry may adopt or enhance in preparation for anticipated industry developments.

By collecting this information, our goal is to produce a publication that is usable to a broad audience of security managers across several industries. While this publication is tailored for security managers, we anticipate that this publication will be useful to a wide array of personnel across all business sectors as well as public sector employees, such as local law enforcement.

Guided primarily by the perspective of security experts, this report provides information about security issues and resources necessary to address future demographic and crime trends as well as recommendations of measures for the security industry to adopt in anticipation of these trends. This report is informed primarily by the views of security experts and documents how various industry leaders anticipate how these trends will influence security over the next five to ten years.

The report is divided into three sections by key topic areas: demographic challenges, crime trends, and technology. Each section contains an overview of the issue, examples of how that issue will influence security goals by industry, and recommendations to prepare for anticipated challenges created by each trend. The final section addresses issues that surfaced during discussions which are indirectly, yet importantly, related to the ability of security professionals, business executives, and all workers to prepare for a safer environment for employees, clients, and customers.

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