Papers presented by Lauren Pearlman since 2019
2023 Detroit, MI, United States
"If You Want a Dirty Job Done, Call Wackenhut"
Lauren Pearlman, University of Florida
Abstract:
Debates about security and surveillance are central to understanding American political and economic development. At the heart of these debates are private military and security companies, which, thanks to generous federal government contracts and little oversight, have expanded their influence throughout the world. Yet their origins remain unexamined. This paper examines the origins of G4S, the world’s largest multinational security services company, now headquartered in London. G4S has roots in a mid-20th century Florida private detective firm called the Wackenhut Corporation. Founded in 1958 by Army veteran and former FBI agent George Wackenhut, the firm provided highly trained armed security forces for nuclear power plants, airports, and embassies before reinventing itself as a pioneer in the private prison industry. As this paper argues, its success was due, in part, to its paramilitary vision: Wackenhut recruited from military job fairs and publications; dressed its guards in helmets and paratrooper boots; and employed military veterans in management. Wackenhut’s business ventures and hiring strategies became characteristic of other private security companies that, together, drove the privatization and militarization of the 20th and 21st century American home front. On a larger scale, this paper encourages business historians to consider the role of private enterprise in the development of mass incarceration. Most scholars situate the birth of private prisons in the 1980s. While true, studies typically do not focus on the entrepreneurs who built them. What business ventures did they engage in prior to the 1980s? What were their motives for expanding their firms into the private prison and detention industries? This paper points to two factors 1) military downsizing and 2) the state’s growing reliance on a broad array of contract security services at the end of the Cold War that led to the meteoric rise of private prisons and immigrant detention centers.