Chapter V.

Security
– a permanent challenge for cities

by Franz Vanderschueren

The city, symbol of security

The urbanisation shapes security

Initial urbanisation changes insecurity

An institutional response: the police

Generating an ideological consensus

The crisis of the early metropolises in America

The consumer society restructures security

Exponential growth of criminality

The range of urban causes

The emergence of new crimes

Crimes linked to drug-trafficking

Organised crime

Cyber crime

Awareness of domestic violence

The narrowing of the gap between serious crime and petty crime

Attempts to respond

Privatised security

The wave of police reforms

The new urban context

The new governance of security

Promising practices

The priorities

Conclusion: the beginning of a long road

References

The city, symbol of security

Ever since the first urban centres were formed until today, the city has always been a symbol of security for citizens. Citizens expect security from city authorities, security which will protect them from the dangers present outside and inside the city. Three periods of the functioning of urban security can be distinguished in the history of cities.

The first period includes cities until the end of the Middle Ages, when the city was first and foremost a refuge for commercial activity, and had to face danger coming from outside. It was the army that then ensured security.

At the beginning of the 14th century, when cities began to have their own feudal powers, the particularity of democracy emerged, but no security structure was universally institutionalised in cities which rarely had more than 50,000 inhabitants, often being City States. Internal security was, however, perceived as a condition of the democratic development of cities and of citizens’ quality of life.

With the period of industrialisation and urbanisation that began in the early 19^th century, when the first large cities emerged, internal security was taken care of by policing structures. This is the model that still prevails today. But over the past thirty years, growing insecurity and the expansion of cities and their peripheral areas have shown that there are limits to this model which is based on the existence of a criminal justice system.

There is ample debate on this subject, and in this article it will be tackled from the viewpoint of the relationship between security and urbanisation. Two preliminary observations must be made. On the one hand, the subject of urban insecurity is vast and heterogeneous since it covers a whole range of issues: theft and attacks on citizens, sexual crimes, fraud and contraband, the trading of favours and all white-collar crimes, domestic violence, violence in schools, cyber-crime, organised crime, human trafficking, the mafia, in certain cases, and all kinds of abuse of power. In addition, it is inseparable from the range of urban and social policies since many crimes and violent behaviour are closely related to citizens’ living conditions. (Weatherburn and Lind, 2001).

On the other hand, tackling the question of urban insecurity means considering two distinct sets of themes which are often confused at the level of citizens: real insecurity based on the direct experience of crime, and the perception of insecurity or a feeling of fear which is independent of victimisation and indicates a lack of confidence in the ability of the authorities or of the community to confront the insecurity (Kessler, 2009; Robin C., 2004).

The urbanisation shapes security

Historically, security has gone through changes linked to the development of urbanisation. From the beginning of industrialisation, which is to say the creation of medium and large cities, two specific periods can be distinguished in these changes.

The first one corresponds to the beginning of industrialisation, between 1800 and 1840, and extends, depending on the country, between this period and the first half of the 20^th century.

This phase marks the transformation of a population which was predominantly rural (90%) to a population which tended to become urban in the industrialised countries and in Latin America. Such population made a living in industrial activities or by having formal and informal work.

The second period coincides with the current period of globalisation of urbanisation when, in the 20^th century, the mainly rural world population became urban, Asia and Africa became massively urbanised, and the number of metropolises increased, particularly in developing countries.

Initial urbanisation changes insecurity

The first period of urbanisation took place at the beginning of the 19^th century in the advanced countries of Europe, and progressively spread to North and South America between 1850 and 1940. The colonial regimes prevented this transformation from taking place in Africa and in Asia. A notable exception was Japan, which became industrialised very early on.

This first transformation brought about urbanisation in many cities of over 200,000 inhabitants, creating the first large cities. In his reflections on the change caused by this evolution, Simmel (1903) shows the end of informal social control, solidarity and social cohesion which had existed through inhabitants’ knowing each other in small town and country communities. According to Simmel, the excessive stimulation in the urban context of the large city [1] leads, to a person becoming indifferent and blasé, dissociating himself from his fellow citizens to seek out a specialisation and an individual role in a climate of freedom and fierce competition. Such generalised individualism and the erosion of informal social control make society vulnerable to crime. The challenge this evolution posed was to find a form of substitution for informal social control through an institutional response.

Indeed, this urbanisation is expressed in most countries by the passage from crime of a rural kind (rustling, attacks on travellers, plundering, etc.) to crime that takes advantage of all the opportunities a city has to offer. Crime becomes established in the context of chaotic, poor housing conditions, particularly in the outskirts of the city. For example, in 1910, in Berlin, 35% of the residential area was comprised of single-room apartments, and 13% of the basements and attics were turned into housing, which meant 60,000 Berliners were living in 20,000 basements. (Jonas and Weidmann, 2006: 164-165) Urbanisation also marks the mass growth of prostitution in cities and the over-working of women in domestic service (Simmel, 1892), as well as an increase of what Sutherland (1949) called “white-collar crime” where usury was commonplace, and the trading of favours and abuse of power were frequent. Corruption was rife.

Furthermore, the norms, particularly with regard to the practice of the appropriation of goods, changed when the urban era began: the relative vagueness of the rural world was not functional for industrial development which needed precise rules to measure profitability. The context of urbanisation and industrialisation and its correlative, the development of the working classes, brought strong resistance to exploitation by employers. There is, therefore, some confusion between social crime (rebellion or agitation) and ordinary crime, often perpetrated by the same people. This explains the concept of “the dangerous classes” in bourgeois minds of the 19^th century. In fact the distinction between the political unrest of working classes and crime was made only in the second half of the 19^th century, when social and political reforms enabled conflicts to be resolved through political or union representation. (Lea, 2006)

An institutional response: the police

This society which was becoming urbanised and industrialised also went through other transformations connected with security. Until then, the creation of the police force that guaranteed people’s protection and law and order, had been private. It was, in fact, Sir Robert Peel, when he was Home Secretary in England, who institutionalized the police force, and, later, the city of Paris adopted the same model which then spread to other countries. The English “bobby” gradually became the ideal model of a police force. Sir Robert Peel’s idea was a kind of de-militarisation of law and order, and a de-privatisation of the services that granted protection of people and property, which now were handed over to the central State or government of the city, and fell into the category of deterrent. The police force was perceived, above all, as a preventive, neighbourhood service which identified with the people. “The police are the public and the public are the police” and “the ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions” he stated. (Chalom et al.. 2000)

The models of police which were to become widespread, responded to two trends. The British “bobby” acted first and foremost as a deterrent. Initially, he carried out numerous duties which involved controlling the working class, but later he focused on offenders. This model was a civil police force which, as a public service, was subordinated to the elected political authority that was either central (in the majority of European countries) or local (as in The United States and Canada).

A second, similar model of a police force emerged in Japan and developed after the Meiji Restoration, in 1868, which gave impetus to industrialisation in that country. It is known as the “Koban”, a polyvalent police force with officers having close contact with local communities; they pay visits to homes several times a year. This system prevails successfully in Japan, and now in Singapore. It involves a very strong link with the local community and knowledge of inhabitants on the part of the police. They fulfil several roles: intelligence unit, formal law and order, mediators and leaders of informal control. The police there provide help to the residents and maintain close links with them; all of this creates awareness of the closeness that exists between the police and the citizens. In addition they develop an approach centred on problem-solving. (Bayley, 1976; Brogden and Nijhar, 2005)

The studies on Japanese police have shown efficiency as the Koban are operating with a number of agents lower than the one of industrialised western countries (see table below) and take advantage from the influence and impact of the whole Japanese structure  of social control (Chikao Uranaka, 2010)

However, despite its civil nature, in many countries the police adopt a vertical, military-style structure which persists until today, distancing the police from communities and making the control of police activities a purely hierarchical exercise. This model does not allow for any civil society control over the police, and its effectiveness and transparency depend exclusively on the qualities of those in command.

Generating an ideological consensus

The police is part of the criminal justice system (police, courts and prisons) arising from the evolution of the law. It is based, on the one hand, on Beccaria’s utilitarian perspective (1764) which views punishment as a form of prevention if it is just, swift, appropriate and proportionate, and, on the other hand, on analyses of human behaviour deemed to be rational. (Bentham, 1840)

At the beginning of urbanisation, the prison was considered as progress compared with earlier despotism, because it avoided arbitrary decisions and allowed for punishment proportionate to the crime, as well as “rehabilitation through labour and the education of criminals”. The criminal justice system was set up, and where it operated, it afforded an effective response to the kind of the crime and to the quantity of it, which was often greater than the number of crimes committed nowadays. Kant (1797) put forward the philosophical foundations that advocated for a secular state being completely responsible for the administration of justice and the police. “For Kant, the right to punish found its cause for action in a kind of moral obligation that the hierarchical authority would have to restore order by imposing suffering on the guilty person.” (Pires, 2008:196)

Additionally, the context of industrialisation imposed rules and forms of negotiation acquired through difficult struggles (unions) which allowed for informal social control in most societies. This system became institutionalised towards the end of the 19^th century in industrialised countries and went unquestioned until the 1960s and 1970s. It underwent some serious crises, but the solutions were considered sufficient insofar as public opinion wanted the delegation of authority to go to the State, via the police and the justice system, which was to control crime in all its forms, and people accepted the idea that prison was a form of expiation.

The setting up of a new kind of criminal justice system with a legal and philosophical foundation and ad hoc instruments – courts, prisons and, particularly, the police – opened the way, at the beginning of urbanisation, when there was often confusion between ordinary crime and social crime, to a phase of social consensus that allowed criminals to be marginalised. Thus, the criminal justice system became operational with the development of urban and industrial capitalism, and it was even helped by its own adversaries, since Engels condemned, in the name of the proletarian revolution, the criminality that came from the working classes. Referring to theft by poor people, which was frequent at the beginning of industrialisation, Engels wrote “The earliest crudest and least fruitful form of this rebellion (proletarian) was that of crime. The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters...The whole might of society was brought to bear upon each criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority” (Engels, 1845:140). That text announced the future concept of “lumpenproletariat” which stigmatised the criminal behaviour of the working classes.

This effective model of the criminal justice system became stabilised at the beginning of the 20^th century, and succeeded in dealing with the main conflicts deriving from crime in Europe, the Americas, Oceania and Japan. In other countries of Asia and Africa, the colonial system ensured law and order, and urban integration, and the police system imposed was no different from those of the metropolises, except for political control. However, the colonial systems slowed down the urbanisation process, as rural populations were not allowed to settle in the cities even if they worked there during the day.

The crisis of the early metropolises in America

This system met with problems that called into question some essential aspects of urban security. The first problem was highlighted by the Chicago School (Park and Burgess, 1921) in the 1920s and 1930s. The rapid growth of the large American cities, which changed from cities that had less than one million inhabitants to several million inhabitants in a matter of decades, due to the arrival of immigrants from different countries of Europe, created districts of “social disorganisation” where criminal behaviour and violence of all sorts prevailed, and generated gangs of young people, analysed by Trasher (1927). The Chicago School showed the geographical and social dimensions of crime; it explained the existence of gangs as a kind of compensatory socialisation created by their peers when institutions (family, school and districts) were insufficient, and it established the foundations of social prevention. In other words, when faced with the crises of urbanisation and industrialisation, the Chicago School approach showed that it was not enough to have a criminal justice system and social policies. Massive prevention policies were also needed which would fit into the urban, social fabric (neighbourhood work) and would focus particularly on groups of youths at risk without stigmatising them.

Thus, well before the Second World War, a functional, effective system had arrived in order to control and prevent crime. The system has a legal, philosophical foundation, instruments and a specific social policy which is social prevention by district and by community. Within the framework of the welfare state, it benefits from ways of solving social conflicts that allow for criminals to be separated, avoiding any collusion with “social crimes”. In this context, cities where the system is well established manage to control crime and have stable or gradually decreasing rates of victimisation.

A second crisis occurred in the second half of the 20^th century, with the studies of philosophers such as Foucault, and sociologists such as Goffman. They showed the failure of prisons as a form of rehabilitation and criticised the right of society to punish (Foucault, 1975) or the perverse nature of prisons presented in the form of “total institutions” which provoked violence and false adaptation (Goffman, 1961). This crisis did not have a really massive, creative response, except in the slow development of alternative punishment which is far from replacing prisons. But the prison crisis continues today, since 60% or more of ex-convicts re-offend. However, the rates of imprisonment show significant differences when compared: in the United States and Russia the rates are 700/100,000 inhabitants, while in Japan the rate is lower than 50/100,000 inhabitants, and in Europe the average rate is roughly 100/100,000 inhabitants. But a higher rate of imprisonment is not an indicator of security, and the reverse is sometimes the case. This rate is more the consequence of citizens’ fears and political ideologies than the result of an effective security policy.

The consumer society restructures security

However, facts like the exponentially growing rates of traditional criminal activities and new crimes which began to undermine the foundations of the criminal justice system in the 20^th century from the 1960s onwards make the search for alternatives complex. The crisis began in the United States, spread to other developed countries and, finally, in the 1980s, reached the developing countries.

Exponential growth of criminality

In industrialised countries, the phenomenon of exponentially rising crime manifested itself in the middle of the period of economic growth during the “30 glorious years”, particularly in crimes against property, while the homicide rate remained stable in most European countries.

Between 1970 and 1985, according to UN statistics, reported crimes increased in urban areas by 5% on average per year, which is far higher than demographic growth, particularly in the industrialised countries. (Finlay, 2000) This increase included all crimes against property and crimes linked to drug-trafficking which constitutes a major new crime. Comparisons are difficult because the sources are not homogeneous but the United Nations’ surveys in representative cities (UNICRI, 1995) showed that at the beginning of the 1990s, in cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, an average of 60% of inhabitants were victims of a crime every five years, not counting domestic violence. The differences were outstanding: in Latin America and in Africa the percentages were 68% and 76% of inhabitants, respectively, and only 44% in Asia. Around 20% of these crimes were against people and around 70% against property.

The main characteristics that appear from the data of this period show that urban crime affects people or their property and principally involves men (80% to 90%). They also show the overwhelming number of adolescents and young adults engaged in such crime, and levels of formal education far lower for criminals than non-criminals. They also indicate that the social sections of people who are excluded either from the formal job market for racial reasons, or because of the poor quality of their urban environment, produced the largest number of criminals (Finlay, 2000), except with regard to “white-collar crime” and domestic violence which is present across all social classes.

The range of urban causes

There are many reasons for this increase, and they do not all have a direct connection with urbanisation. We should first underline the fact that there is no correlation between the size of the cities and the crime rates: Tokyo, the world’s largest agglomeration (30 million), is one of the safest cities, whereas Port Moresby which has fewer than 300,000 inhabitants is one of the most crime-ridden cities, and within one country there can be a marked difference. Bogotá has a crime rate lower than those of Medellin and Cali, which have only a half or a third as many inhabitants. It is the management of security and not the size of cities that conditions the crime rate.

The causes connected to forms of urbanisation are the diverse opportunities for theft or vandalism linked to individual rather than public means of transport, turning the car into an object of theft or vandalism. In addition, the increase in the number of double-income families and the predominance of the nuclear family in urban areas means that nobody is at the home for several hours during the day and sometimes children are left on their own, thus reducing parental care. The breakdown of the extended family link has removed the possibility of family network support. The complete separation of places of work from homes and leisure spaces increases the amount of time homes are left empty during the day, and sometimes for several hours at night.

There is also juvenile frustration. When faced with the difficulty of obtaining a worthwhile salary in the formal sector of the urban economy, thus delaying autonomy which would enable the acquisition of an independent home and the possibility of founding a family, urban youths go down the alternative route of criminality, particularly the crime of marginalised groups, or “amateur crime” (Kessler, 2004), or drug-trafficking. Access to bars and cafés at all times of the day and night leads to more violence and fights that are sometimes fatal. The example of Diadema, a town in the outskirts of São Paulo which succeeded in lowering the annual rate of homicides from 100 per 100,000 inhabitants to fewer than 20, by banning the selling of alcohol after a certain time of the night”, illustrates this phenomenon. (De Luca Miki, 2007).

The specific case of badly-equipped, poor districts increases the causes of criminality. Jobs are scarce, and so crime becomes an alternative for many young people. The cost of living in the city is high, and alcoholism and the problematic drug consumption are frequent. Gangs of youths linked to occasional crime and drug-trafficking are commonplace. [2] Relationships between the police or justice system and these districts are hostile and loaded with either ethnic or class prejudice, which sometimes result in violent, discriminatory or corrupted police practice. And, finally, theft and drug-trafficking, contrary to what happened during the period of consensus which ensured informal control, are considered as activities which although are not positive, are more or less tolerated for want of other means by the inhabitants of these districts.

From the viewpoint of security issues, the principal risk of these districts is their possible gradual transformation into no-go areas, meaning districts where the socially recognised law is no longer applied but is substituted by the standards of an internal group that imposes its rules by force and, as a result, creates conditions which make the community vulnerable to organised crime.

Gradually, young people who are victims of societal violence are marginalised (Walgrave, 1995) and many murders, suicides and criminal behaviour such as theft, armed attacks, problematic drug consumption and drug-trafficking and uncivil behaviour are associated in urban mentality with “youths at risk”. The perception of an adult world centred on its own fears stigmatises these young people, forgetting that they are victims as well as perpetrators of anti-social behaviour, and that their “at risk” behaviour affects above all their psycho-social development. The rates of victimisation of youths often double those of adults while their socio-economic situation makes youths the principal victims of unemployment. For example, in Latin America, 23% of young people aged between 15 and 29 neither work nor study (Sen and Kligsberg, 2007: 208); and 22% of girls and 15% of boys under 17 have been victims of sexual abuse within their families (IIN, 2003). The inequalities and their urban expression, spatial segregation, worsen even more this situation of injustice. As J. Borja describes: “the inequalities, in a context of poverty, generate vulnerable and threatened sectors (the wealthy). Among the vulnerable (the poor and marginalised, the unemployed and workers without contracts, and anomic) there emerges behaviour of expressive violence (frustrated youths see what the city has to offer but which is unaffordable to them), and groups at risk appear: the future offenders. The mafias of the black market (drug and various trafficking, theft and kidnapping, the workforce of organised crime) find fertile ground in these groups of people”. [3] (Borja, 2005:215)

The emergence of new crimes

The mass appearance of new sorts of previously unknown crimes, marginal or ignored, constitutes a second factor, after the exponential growth of crime, which accentuates the crisis of the criminal justice system.

Crimes linked to drug-trafficking

Crimes linked to drug-trafficking first appeared in the 1960s and became widespread across the world in the 1980s. Involved in these crimes are actors as diverse as organised crime, mafias, decentralised actors in the slums who supply drugs to all consumers and, finally, the small-scale dealers who supply the local clientele in the neighbourhood and, of course, the users who come from all districts and social sectors.

The international dimension of these crimes and the whole ensemble of support services that organised crime has at its disposal (well-paid legal experts), as well as the reproduction processes of this criminality make it very complex; to tackle it, the police services, the courts, the health and education services as well as urban services are mobilized.

Governments deal with this problem in two ways, mainly: by cracking down on drug peddling and with heterogeneous prevention policies. However, the ideological aspect of the drug debate conditions the responses to this problem, as shown in the recently re-launched debate in Latin America by three former Presidents [4], and from cities’ experiences which have developed innovative forms of prevention, as in Vancouver, for example. (Vanderschueren, 2006)

On this point, cities are facing three main problems. The first one is the no-go areas where forms of “perverse social capital” ensure both the predominance of drug-trafficking through violence and the reproduction of their local domination by co-opting youth.

The second problem is that of the prevention approach. There are two distinct lines: cities that lay stress on primary prevention aimed at the whole population – whether they are consumers or not – and whose objective is “zero drugs”. And then there are cities that have adopted a policy of targeting vulnerable populations through primary protection schemes, aimed at developing the resilience capacities of those concerned and also at supplying rehabilitation treatment; the problem of trafficking is dealt with in cooperation with the police and a policy of harm reduction is established. [5] This last aspect is often a problem because it involves acknowledgement of the fact that “zero drugs” is utopian and that some users must be helped with no certainty of success in their rehabilitation.

A third problem is the trivialisation of both the use of drugs and the trafficking. We increasingly see that drug use varies according to social sector and age, and that the activity of trafficking is somewhat tolerated, particularly in places where the sale of drugs offers an alternative to unemployment or under-employment. In Latin America, for example, the fact that more than one in five young people are either jobless or not receiving any formal schooling, makes them a group available for trafficking.

Organised crime

For a long time, there have been mafias, but neither they nor organised crime had previously benefitted at an international level from the financial advantages of their activities. Nowadays, they play a considerable role in the globalisation of crime.

Organised crime (de la Corte and Giménez, 2010; C. Flores, 2009) and the mafias are two distinct phenomena which use violent methods. Unlike organised crime which grows according to the weakness of the State structure, particularly the police and the courts, mafias have support in civil society and a territorial base which make them difficult to control and, at the same time, ensures their continuity. Organised crime is a kind of firm which in order to develop an illegal trade uses violence and corruption, and tends, especially through money-laundering, to penetrate the formal, legal economy, which blurs the boundaries of the legal systems of finance and the economy. It can only expand when the State is weak and allows illegal trade or when it is incapable of punishing it. When there is repression by the State, organised crime has two main responses: moving on to other and usually more violent crimes as in Mexico (G. Valdés, 2013), or decentralisation in cartels which multiply, and, when neutralised, do not have a serious effect on the whole set-up. (The model is Cali, Colombia). This second option was followed in the Western Cape, South Africa (Kinnes, 2000) as in most countries of Latin America where drug-trafficking infiltrates into districts, beginning with small groups or families and expanding as more young people are recruited.

This decentralisation affects the city because it increases the number of no-go areas and complicates State intervention which needs a connection with the local authorities, community policing, decentralised controls and well-trained networks of prevention led by local prevention actors.

Cyber crime

Cyber crime, which is only about fifteen years old, grows very rapidly and obliges the police, teachers, bankers, entrepreneurs, IT specialists, lawyers, judges and legislators to create an ensemble of controls which are highly complex and sophisticated. It is defined as “any criminal offense that is committed or facilitated through the use of the communication capabilities of computers and computer systems.” [6] Cyber crime comprises falsification or cloning of credit cards, penetration of banking secrecy and embezzlement, insider trading and using mobile phones for transmitting images of pornography or gratuitous acts of violence, plus the abuse of companies providing these services. All of the above illustrate this kind of crime which is very difficult to control without investing costly resources. In 2005, Y. Jewkes (2005:513) estimated that fewer than 10% of these crimes were reported and only 2% of them were dealt with.  She also states that the police are not the main actors in charge of controlling and preventing cyber crime, activities that correspond more to Internet service providers and the users. [7]

The comparative results of a survey from Price Waterhouse highlighted that in 2009, 30% of surveyed enterprises were victims of these frauds meanwhile the number of victims reached 34% in 2011. [8] However in 2011, 50% of frauds were detected by the enterprises themselves, which confirms the thesis of Y. Jewkes. This phenomenon is growing and affects many victims among enterprises, governments and internet users, in spite of the unreliable published costs of cybercrime as they derive from studies ordered or performed by companies specialized in selling security programs

Awareness of domestic violence

Domestic violence affects women, children and, in some cases, other members of the family. This violence is not new but the awareness of the amount of domestic violence and its impact is recent. These are attacks on the most basic rights of women. Those young people who are victims of or witness this kind of violence often conclude that it is a way of resolving conflicts (Smaoun, 2000; S. Larraín, 2007). For several decades, the struggle of women’s movements, international organisations and regional conventions [9] have changed legislation, demanded that these violent practices be recognised as crimes, easing the incorporation of the gender dimension into police training and practice, and raising awareness on “fémicide” (the murder of a woman by her husband, ex-husband or ex-companion). It is estimated that nearly 50% of women who have been murdered have been victims of femicide.

However, the cultural roots of domestic violence run deep and can only be changed over the long term and by civil society. In the cities, we are starting to realise that domestic violence cannot be changed merely by the exercise of justice or police protection, but rather by community mechanisms which play an educational role in the neighbourhoods (for example, reception centres, community monitors, re-education programmes for men and family mediation).

The narrowing of the gap
between serious crime and petty crime

The increase of violence in petty crime and the fact that victims are killed or wounded for almost nothing, and particularly the co-opting of youth into uncontrollable actions linked to drug-trafficking, makes it difficult to draw a distinction between urban petty crime and serious crime in terms of violence. This situation increases citizens’ fears and leads to more severe forms of repression. Citizens are often frightened by young criminals who have committed armed theft because of the violence accompanying these acts and the incapacity to understand, prevent and confront this behaviour, but they view the 50,000 million dollar fraud of financier Madoff (LINK), misappropriation of funds or tax evasion as though they were watching a detective film.

Attempts to respond

From the 1970s and particularly in a context of economic stagnation, increasing criminality turns into an unbearable social burden. The obsession with security grew in all sections of society, and towards the end of the 1980s research shows that poor urban sectors were the main victims of criminality. The first responses to this phenomenon appear from the 1980s onwards.

Privatised security

The prestige of the traditional police officer has dwindled and privatisation of security has emerged. From the beginning of the 1980s, private security systems approved by States began to appear on a large scale. This system gradually overtook the number of police officers. At the beginning of the 21^st century there are now more agents of private security systems than police officers in democratic countries. [10] This “silent revolution” which has reintroduced profit in security, has developed a system conceived at the outset as a way of reducing the costs of funding the police. It benefits from States’ tacit complicity, since ten years went by before any legislation appeared on this subject, first of all in Germany, and, also, because in countries as different as the United States and China (Beijing) in the 1990s, a large part of the private security system contracts came from the State. This system is also encouraged by insurance company practices which often demand private protection, judging that of the police to be inadequate. At the end of the 1990s, the growth of this system reached more than 20% annually in the United States, the United Kingdom and China. (Irish, 1999)

The limitations of this system are known: it is currently a system which almost exclusively serves the sector of private or public enterprise and major services, covering less than 10% of the population. In most countries, this system employs staff at minimum salary level, leading to a very high rate of staff turnover which stops them from becoming proficient or developing a sense of loyalty to their employers; also, staff training is often shaky. Finally, being market oriented, it is only concerned about the clients. In some countries, the collusion between police activities and the private security system is obvious when police officers are authorised to be employed in this sector. In addition, the private security system, contrary to State justice, rejects any moral notion of control, the agenda being an instrumental rather than moral recommendation, governed by the notion of profit and loss, which replaces the moral language of criminal justice. Thus, the control of theft is only carried out if the cost is inferior to that of the initial loss. (Shearing and Stenning, 1984)

Along the same lines, the privatisation of prisons seems to be a formula which will enable costs of running prisons to be reduced. But this formula poses the problem of a conflict of interests for prison managers, who have to choose between having as many prisoners as possible and releasing them.

The wave of police reforms

A second response to this crisis appears within the police forces and this has led to several police reforms. Four formulae prevail. There is the model of community policing which is spreading in Canada, in several American cities and elsewhere in other countries, with different modalities and nuances: neighbourhood policing in Europe and community policing in America. This kind of police is based on several principles, finding inspiration in a return to the basics: Sir Robert Peel’s approach. (Bayley, 1994; Brodeur, 2003; Chalom et al., 2001)

A second formula, which is in fact included in classic community policing, is the so-called “problem-solving” approach of the police. Created by Goldstein (1990), this is a transformation from reactive police activity to a proactive police who focus on the causes of a problem rather than on a response to its effects.

A third reform, called “strategic proximity” fits into the neighbourhood police formula, but modifies structures within the police in order to deal with the new problems (Fernandez, 2008). The new element resides in an adaptation of internal police structures in its work related to prevention activities.

A fourth model, called intelligence led policing, is a way of better deliver police work. It “involves developing and maintaining a detailed and up-to-date picture of patterns of crime and criminality in order to intervene it most effectively to disrupt networks and remove prolific offenders. Doing so requires staffing, procedures and structures to elicit information , interpret it and act on it promptly and systematically” (Tilley, 2005:321)

So we are far from achieving a universal model of a police force, but rather in a search for a model which would adapt to each country and even to each city. One of the main points of discussion that has to be defined is to whom the police should be accountable: just to the hierarchy or to civil society as well ? [11]

To this matter of police reforms in several countries must be added the issue of police transparency. A radical fight against corruption is far from won, which makes the control of serious crime almost impossible. Technical capability and trust in the police are essential success factors. A police force backed by public opinion, as is the case in Quebec, has 85% public approval ratings (Dupont and Perez, 2006). But in other countries, public opinion approval ratings do not even reach 30%. [12]

And, finally, the current shifting of the discussion on the subject of “the police” to that of “security networks” (Newburn, 2005) shows that we are witnessing a “breaking up of State monopoly on policing, and the emergence of a broad range of private and community based agencies that prevent crime, deter criminality, catch law-breakers, investigate offences and stop conflicts” (Bayley and Shearing, 1996:586).

Legal reforms in Criminal Law are the modernisations that seek to make the law more flexible and to reduce impunity, but it is clear that the law can neither tackle nor elucidate all crimes. [13] Modernisation of the justice system is always costly; in the British case, for example, only a 2% crime reduction was achieved. The wheels of justice do not allow for the effective tackling of a large quantity of crimes which are important to the general public. It is this situation which brought the private sector to have recourse to arbitration to settle disputes between private companies.

Although Criminal Law remains essential in confronting organised crime, corruption and serious crimes, the search for alternatives, such as restorative justice or social mediation, are today still very much in the minority.

The new urban context

The new urban context changes rapidly, particularly with the urban sprawl of Third World metropolises and major North American cities, like Los Angeles. In the 19^th century, the density of construction went hand in hand with demographic and social density, and the absence of rapid transport facilitated the frequency of social contact (Innerarity, 2006). On the morphological plane, the density of 19^th century cities has been replaced by fragmented urban districts and overflowing urbanisation with no centrality (Sassen, 1991). The lifestyle tends towards social segregation and the homogenisation of groups in districts according to their income and lifestyle. These separated units have no links between them and protect themselves in “gated communities” (Charmes, 2005), or take refuge in ethnic areas where a discriminating urbanisation consolidates its position, which only furthers insecurity, social distance and the feeling of not belonging to the same society. Shopping centres become semi-public spaces where everyone meets but only as consumers.

Public spaces have changed and if they are to be made into instruments of social interaction, their solidarities will have to be reinvented. In fact, current material conditions no longer demand the same focal points and densities of earlier times, as access to private and rapid public transport, to telecommunications and other means of communication enable a different kind of urban life. It is within such context that solidarities must be reinvented locally, which could be generated by social participation and responsibility on matters of security.

The new governance of security

The problem of security in cities is, above all, a dual problem of governance. The first problem lies in the ability to articulate the central State’s initiatives with those of local and private authorities, and, particularly, with local communities. This involves acceptance of the end of State monopoly with regard to security, and recognition of the role of other actors, where responsibility for security becomes everyone’s concern: State, local and community authorities, the private sector and civil society. For example, there can be no social prevention policy without a prevention programme set up by local authorities. Because the prevention policy has to be decentralised, it is illusory to expect the central State to take on this task. But one can expect the State to encourage it, to contribute to the funding and to ensure follow-up. Similarly, the role of the private sector becomes unavoidable: cyber-crime control or businesses protection need private security systems, but more effective and professional than the current systems and the responsibility of internet providers and users in cleaning the cyberspace.

The participation of social actors and their connection with local authorities through various associations, partnerships or networks constitute the second aspect of governance. Civil society participation acquires decisive weight insofar as it is inescapable. Without it, alternative penalties, reinsertion programmes and focused prevention on combating domestic violence or violence in schools cannot be developed. Police reform only acquires its full strength if it is accompanied by the responsibilisation of civil society.

Within this framework, acceptance of the role of other institutions becomes the sine qua non, and the connections with and practice of an “active subsidiarity” are essential. In order to meet this challenge there must be a decentralised security policy, competent local authorities, adequate institutional framework and educational capacities for coordination and dissemination.

Promising and negative practices

There are many positive and negative examples. The cases of Bogotá and Medellin, in Colombia, and Diadema, in Brazil, are the best illustrations of this in Latin America: the reduction in the rate of homicides of 391/100,000 inhabitants in 1991 to fewer than 30 in Medellín (Salazar, 2008), the similar evolution in Bogota (from 120 to fewer than 20) in eight years, (Llorente and Rivas, 2004; Mockus, 2007) and the case of Diadema (de Luca, Miki, 2007) already mentioned, show that no situation is irreversible. Their success is due to a policy of good governance run by local authorities, set up in a sustainable, educational manner, backed by a positive view of security as a component of social cohesion, and on a range of cross-cutting social prevention programmes, together with a control policy supported by neighbourhood police. (UN-Habitat-UAH, 2009) Whereas the countries of Central America (Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala), which have applied so-called “hard” and later “super hard” policies of repression, have seen an increase in the levels of crime (Sen and Kliksberg, 2007).

Mexico confirms the same lessons. The only repression through joined operations (military forces and police) implemented between 2007 and 2009 in the states where organized crime was extremely violent, has led to an increase in homicides (around 60%) but the organized crime is responsible for only half of them (Escalante, 2011; Merino 2011). This increase overcomes the growth of homicides in other Mexican states without joined interventions. The analysis of Merino (2011) shows that without these federal government operations between 5000 and 7000 lives could have been saved.  The consequences are clear: organized crime (Valdés, 2013) is far from being neutralized and urban social prevention programs are urgently needed as well as social reforms. 

The priorities

These decentralised policies around a structure of good governance involve the acceptance of priorities that vary according to city. There are, however, inevitable priorities like social prevention aimed at “youths at risk”, the prevention of domestic violence, the reinsertion of prisoners and the fight against organised crime.

The importance of prevention focused on youths at risk comes from the fact that a large number of perpetrators and victims of crime belong to this group. These young people are in a learning phase and are vulnerable to being influenced by organised crime. The success of prevention policies implies acceptance of the fact that the main social issue at stake in “at risk behaviour” of groups of youths is the psychosocial development of them and not the insecurity of adults. In effect, too many adults see that these young people represent a risk for the adult world, hence the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility and the hardening of sanctions aimed at youths in many countries. There must be a definitive change in the viewpoint focused on the adult world.

This approach also involves youths as protagonists, making them participate in the formulation of prevention programmes, such as social policies from which they should be benefitting. For example, developing prevention policies aimed at violent gangs of youths proves difficult without the support of other young people. Access to these young people also involves modalities that take into account young people’s language, culture and diversity as well as emotional and spiritual needs. The underground culture (hip hop, etc.), for example, showed its effectiveness in New York, Medellin and Mexico for groups most at risk.  One of the most effective and successful initiative in Los Angeles “Home Boys Industry”, addressing former gang’s members and ex-convicts shows 70% reinsertion.

 Domestic violence is a fundamental urban “work in progress” of security since between 25% and 50% of families are affected by this problem. The establishment of community reception structures, support and re-education is today a priority for municipalities (Larraín, 2007): fair laws and effective policing is not enough. The presence in the districts of monitors trained in this field can do a great deal and the re-education of aggressors as in the case of the work of the “Promundo” NGO in Brazil.

The international debate on prisons shows that recourse to alternative punishments or to alternative forms of justice is a route that contributes to involving civil society and to legitimising the exercise of justice. And yet one of the restrictions of these alternative formulae is that they require commitment on the part of local communities to offer these opportunities as, for example, community work. The development of capabilities within cities to take charge of these alternatives is a necessary trend to follow.

The reinsertion of former prisoners is often a failure since we know that at least 60% of them re-offend and the large majority are stigmatised for life. Despite commitments made by almost all countries (Marwan M., 2012), the reduction of imprisonments has often increased with no correlation to demographic growth and reinsertion has failed. For there to be a change, alternative punishments and modifications in the life of the prisoner must be sought in order to redirect him to citizen re-education, by changing the prison structure which accumulates the negative characteristics of Goffman’s (1961) “total institutions”, and by ensuring a “tutor” from the time of imprisonment until several years after release. On this point, the Japanese model is interesting because it gives the ex-prisoner not only the effective support of a person in charge of conditional release who looks after around twenty former prisoners, but also a personalised “tutor” who is a person of note in the city, who having received his training, helps the former prisoner to find work and social reinsertion. 

Finally, the fight against organised crime has become a priority. It involves action led by the central State where the role of the police and of legislation is essential, making it one of the priority areas. Cities on their own cannot confront this opponent but they can contribute to this objective through information and the fight against corruption, and, particularly, through prevention policies for groups of vulnerable young people who might be seduced by the offers of easy money made by organised crime  and through the inclusion of no-go areas. On this point, the temptation of many cities is to restrict itself to  situational prevention which consists of modifying the urban context to avoid crime, by embellishing it, restructuring it or making it safer. The example of the “cable metro” [14] of Medellin installed in the traditionally violent marginal districts, shows the need for social prevention policies. It took 32 social prevention projects in these districts to make peace with and calm the inhabitants there before the Metro was finally built, and now it improves the quality of life of the exclusion districts. (UN-HABITAT-UAH, 2009)

Conclusion:
the beginning of a long road

The new governance does not destroy the criminal justice system but exposes its limitations and changes in accordance with the evolution of cities and their insecurity. It is necessary to have a change of mentality, of practices and of institutional structure to create networks of security and conditions for informal social control that is positive for every urban society.

This new governance, that we see timidly rising in “urban pacts” of successful partnerships and in practices of “Libre Blanc” such as in Johannesburg and Bogotá, is passing through a new institutional framework which should completely change the habits of monopolistic States, introducing new actors and accepting flexible ways that make all citizens and civil society responsible for security.

This structure is yet to be built and we know that it must go through much delegation of responsibility to cities, that it requires the support of States and civil society institutions, police reform which takes account of national cultures, forms of partnership which include young people and practices of justice which must be education for conflict resolution. We are still far from consensus on this point, but current outlines indicate that the way is now open.

Bibliography

Bairoch, P. (1985) De Jéricho à Mexico. Villes et économie dans l´histoire, Paris : Gallimard.

Bayley, D. (1994) Police for the future, New York : Oxford University Press.

Bayley, D. and Shearing, C. (1996) “The future of Policing”, Law and Society Review, 30, 3, p. 585-606.

Beccaria, C. (1979) Des délits et des peines, Paris : Flammarion.

Bentham, J. (1840) Théorie des peines et des récompenses, Bruxelles : Société Belge de Librairie.

Borja, J. (2003) La ciudad conquistada, Madrid : Alianza Editorial.

Brodeur, J.P. (2003) Les visages de la police. Pratiques et perceptions, Montréal : Presses universitaires de Montréal.

Brogden, M., Nijhar, P. (2005) Community Policing: national and International Models and Approches, Portland : Willan Publishing.

Burguess, E., Bogue, D (1964) Contributions to Urban Sociology, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press.

Chalom, M., Leonard, L., Vanderschueren, F. y Vezina, C. (2001) Urban Safety and Good Governance : the Role of the Police Habitat and International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, Montreal : ICPC.

Charmes, E. (2005) La vie périurbaine face à la menace des gated communities, Paris : L´Harmattan.

De la Corte, L. et Giménez, A. (2010) Crimen.org, Barcelona : Ariel.

De Luca Miki, R. (2007)  Diadema promoviendo la cultura de Paz en Ciudades seguras para convivir, (p.169-186), El Salvador : PNUD.

Dupont B., Pérez, E. (2006) Les Polices du Québec, Paris : PUF.

Engels (1845) La situation de la classe laborieuse en Angleterre.

Escalante, F. (2011) “La muerte tiene permiso”, Revista Nexos, 397, p. 36-49, LINK. (consult. 02. 2012).

Fernández, C. (2008) Proximidad Estratégica de la Policía del Siglo XXI : Policía y convivencia ciudadana, la experiencia de Badalona en. LINK. ( consult. 06. 2009).

Findlay, M. (1999) The Globalization of Crime, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Flores, C. A. (2009)  El estado en crisis : crimen organizado y política : desafíos para la consolidación democrática, México : Publicaciones de la Casa Chata.

Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums, Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, New York : Doubleday Anchor.

Goldstein, H. (1990) Problems Oriented Policing, New York : McGraw- Hill.

Grafmeyer, J. (2004) L´école de Chicago. Naissance de l´écologie urbaine, Paris : Flammarion.

Hagedorn, J. (ed.) (2007) Gangs in The Global City, Chicago : University of Illinois Press.

Instituto Interamericano del Niño (INN) (2003) La Protección de los Derechos de los Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes frente a la Violencia Sexual, Montevideo : INN.

Innerarity, D. (2006) El Nuevo espacio público, Madrid : Espasa.

Irish, J. (1999) The future of South Africa’s Private Security Industry, ISS. Monograph Series 39, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies (ISS)

Jewkes, Y. (2005) Policing Cybercrime in Tim Newburn, Handbook of Policing, p. 501-524, Portland : Willan Publishing.

Kessler, G. (2004) Sociología del delito amateur, Buenos Aires : Paidos.

Kessler, G. (2009) El sentimiento de inseguridad. Sociología del temor al delito, Buenos Aires :  Siglo XXI.

Kinnes, I. (2000) From urban street gangs to criminal empires: The changing face of gangs in the Western Cape, Monograph 48, Cape Town : ISS.

Klein, M., Kerner,H-J., Maxson, C., Witekamp, E. (2001) The Eurogang Paradox Streets Gangs and Youth Groups in the U.S. and Europe, Dordrecht : Kluwer Academia Publishers.

Larraín, S. (2007) Violencia de género : el desafío de la prevención, en Alda, E. y Veliz, G.  (org.) ¿Cual es la salida? (p.149-187), Washington : Banco Interamericano de desarrollo.

Lea, J. (2002) Crime and Modernity, London : Sage.

Levi, M. (2005) Organised and Financial Crime in Tim Newburn, Handbook of Policing, (p.444-466), Portland : Willan Publishing.

Llorente, M.V., Rivas, A. (2004) La caída del crimen en Bogotá: una década de políticas de seguridad ciudadana, en Dammert, L. (org.) Seguridad Ciudadana : Experiencias y Desafíos, (p.311-342), Valparaíso: UR-BAL Red 14,

Marwan M. (dir.), 2012, Les sorties de délinquance. Théories, méthodes et enquêtes, La Découverte, Paris.

Merino, J. (2011) « Los operativos conjuntos y la tasa de homicidios: una medición », Revista Nexos, 402, p.47-50. LINK. (consult. 01. 2012).

Mockus, A. (2007) Papel y Retos de los Gobiernos Locales en la gestión de la seguridad ciudadana, en Ciudades seguras para convivir, (p.117-168), El Salvador : PNUD.

Newburn, T. (2005) The future of Policing in Newburn, Handbook of Policing, (p.707-721), Portland : Willan Publishing.

ONU-HABITAT y Universidad A. Hurtado (UAH) (2009) Guía local de prevención, Santiago : ONU-HABITAT y UAH.

ONU-HABITAT y Universidad A. Hurtado (2011) Guía para la prevención con jóvenes, Santiago : ONU-HABITAT y UAH.

Robin, C. (2006) La peur: Histoire d´une idée politique, Paris : Armand Colin.

Rodgers, D. (1999) Youth Gangs and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: a literature Survey. Working Paper no.4, Urban Peace Program Series, Washington : World Bank.

Sassen, S. (2003) Los espectros de la globalización, Buenos Aires : Fondo de cultura económica.

Sen, A. y Kligsberg, B. (2007) Primero la Gente, Barcelona : Deusto.

Simmel, G. (1971)  Las grandes urbes y la vida del espíritu en Simmel, G. El individuo y la libertad  (p.375-398), Barcelona : Ediciones Península.

Sutherland, E.H. (1949) White Collar Crime, New York : Holt Rinehart and Winston.

Thrasher, F. (1927) The Gang. A study of 1313 Gangs in Chicago, Chicago : The University of Chicago Press.

United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI).

(1995) Criminal Victimization in the Developing World, Rome : UNICRI.

Uranaka, C. (2010) Police et contrôle social au Japon, Paris : L´Harmattan.

Valdés G., (2013) Historia del narcotráfico en México. Aguilar, México.

Vanderschueren F., Lunecke y Eissmann (2007) Modelos democráticos de prevención, Santiago : Universidad A. Hurtado y Fundación F. Ebert.

Walgrave, L. (1995) Criminological prevention in the city, in Fijnaut, C., Goethals, J. Peters, J.T. and Walgrave, L. (ed.) Changes in Society, Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe, vol. I, (p.251-253), The Hague :  Kluwer law International.

Weatherburn, D. and Lind, B. (2001), Delinquent-Prone Communities, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.