Enforcement actions against guard contractors
Data > Enforcement actions against guard contractors
Federal enforcement actions against the 48 largest U.S. government guard contractors, hand-coded from Department of Justice and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission press releases: 48 actions from 2009 to 2025, each with its source link, the amount in the release's own words and what the release says about liability, plus a check of the federal exclusions list.
Download the dataset (28 MB, zip, from Zenodo) · Code and documentation
| Source | US Department of Justice and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission press releases; SAM.gov exclusions (General Services Administration); companies from the Mercenomics dataset us-guard-spending (USAspending.gov) |
|---|---|
| Covers | Press releases from September 2009 to April 2025; companies ranked by guard-contract money, fiscal years 2008 to 2026 |
| Size | 48 actions (34 resolved, 14 lawsuits or complaints open when announced) and 48 company groups |
| Format | CSV tables, with a documentation file, the hand coding of every release read, the downloaded source files and the code that builds and checks them |
| Version | 1.0.0, published 29 October 2026 |
| Licence | Data: CC BY 4.0. Code: MIT. The sources are works of the US government, in the public domain. |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.23770755 (all versions) · 10.5281/zenodo.23770756 (this version) |
What it is
Private guard companies protect US embassies, military bases, courthouses and federal buildings, and the largest of them receive billions of dollars in federal contracts. When the government sues, settles with or prosecutes one of them, the record is scattered across thousands of agency press releases. This dataset gathers the actions announced against the 50 largest recipients of federal guard contracts (48 company groups once two placeholder entries are removed) into one table, with the release behind every row.
The Department of Justice announced 17 resolved actions with $120,957,831 in amounts stated, among them Paragon Systems' $52 million False Claims Act settlement over small-business set-aside contracts (2024), DynCorp International's $21 million settlement (2025), a $15 million criminal fine in G4S Secure Solutions NV's bid-rigging plea over Defense Department contracts in Belgium (2021) and ArmorGroup North America's $7.5 million settlement over the US Embassy guard force in Kabul (2011). The EEOC announced 17 resolved employment discrimination actions with $5,255,399 stated, including Akal Security's $1.62 million pregnancy discrimination settlement (2010) and MVM's $1.6 million national origin settlement (2020). None of the 48 groups is on the SAM.gov list of companies currently barred from federal contracts, and 35 have no action in these sources.
Most settlements are not findings of wrongdoing. Many settlements state that the claims are allegations only, with no determination of liability; lawsuits marked as filed were allegations when announced. The liability column quotes what each release says.
What it cannot be used to say
- It cannot rank companies by how much they break the law. Larger contractors employ more people and face more cases, agencies choose which cases to announce, and some names are easier to find than others.
- It cannot show guilt except where a release reports a guilty plea or admissions (G4S Secure Solutions NV, Coastal International Security, Alutiiq International Solutions). Most actions are settlements without findings, or lawsuits that were allegations when announced.
- A company with no rows does not have a clean record. It means only that these sources had nothing found by this method. Press releases are not the full enforcement record: Department of Labor wage and OSHA cases, labour board, state and private cases, and contract terminations are not included.
- It cannot show a trend over time. The Justice Department's release service holds few releases before 2013, so earlier years are under-represented.
- Links to company groups are stated, not assumed. Eleven actions are linked only by a shared brand name (for example Securitas GmbH Werkschutz to Securitas AB), and some predate the company joining its group; each row says how it was linked.
How it was checked
- All 65 releases that name a covered company were read in full by hand; every one left out has a written reason (individual employees, part-owned companies, the company as victim, duplicates).
- A script confirms that every company name, amount and liability statement recorded appears word for word in its release, and that every dollar figure equals the amount quoted.
- The 50 companies and their contract totals match the published table of the us-guard-spending dataset to $0.01 million.
- Every one of the 48 groups' 126 entity IDs and 119 names was checked against all 169,173 active SAM.gov exclusion records.
What is in the file
Files
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
data/clean/enforcement_actions.csv | One row per action (48 rows) |
data/clean/companies.csv | One row per company group (48 rows): guard-contract money, releases found, actions, amounts and SAM exclusions |
data/coding/release_review.csv | Every release that names a covered company (65), with the decision taken and, for those left out, why |
data/coding/actions.csv | The hand coding behind the action table |
data/interim/candidates.csv | The releases found by name matching, before review |
data/interim/sam_matches.csv | Matches in the SAM exclusions list (none) |
Columns
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
action_id | A for DOJ, E for EEOC |
date | Date of the press release |
agency, office | DOJ or EEOC, and the issuing office |
company_group, group_rank | Parent company as in USAspending, and its rank by guard-contract money, FY2008-2026 |
entity_named | The company as named in the release, word for word |
link_basis, group_note | How the company is linked to the group (see above), and any caveat |
track | civil or criminal |
action | Settlement, consent decree, plea agreement, lawsuit filed, and so on |
stage | resolved, or filed (open when announced) |
law | The law named in the release |
conduct | What was alleged, or admitted, in neutral words summarized from the release |
customer | The government agency the contract or workplace was for, where the release says |
amount_usd, amount_precision, amount_text | Amount the company agreed to pay, exact/approximate/minimum, and the release's own words |
liability | What the release says about liability, quoted where it says something |
related_action | The filing and resolution of the same case |
source_url, source_title | The press release |
Cite
Azom, Kazi Affnann (2026). guard-contractor-enforcement: federal enforcement actions against the largest U.S. guard contractors, from DOJ and EEOC press releases (Version v1.0.0) [Data set]. Mercenomics. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23770756
The DOI above is for version 1.0.0. To always point to the latest version, use 10.5281/zenodo.23770755. Found an error? Report it on the Corrections page.