In situations of insecurity, when society falls prey to fear, it is more appreciative
of resounding repressive action than of reflection on the causes of conflicts.
It is surprising to note the persistence in the application of the same recipes
for treating a range of crime situations.
What does security mean in a constantly evolving world? Even at the best of times,
security has never been anything more than temporary and apparent.
Security – which is achieved through risk control– means, for human societies,
the ability to maintain their essential characteristics in the face of changing
conditions – in an inevitably dynamic equilibrium – and, at the same time,
in the face of likely or real threats. This uncertain equilibrium between stability
and innovation is therefore an essential condition for the survival
– in its indestructible essentials – and, at the same time, evolution
– which allows adaptation to new challenges – of any society.
So the reiterated and conflictive political juxtaposing of security (stability)
and freedom(creativity) does not seem to make much sense, because both of them,
in the right proportions, are essential ingredients for any government formula
setting out to guarantee human coexistence and development.
Taken as exclusive values, both freedom – which governs the worldwide expansion
of the single trade network and the global information network
–  and security  – which dominates the political praxis of states –, very often end up
creating a scenario of infinite social insecurity – due to the excesses of
market freedom without civic controls – and of civil insecurity – due to restrictions
on rights and freedom caused by a surfeit of security.
We think about things the other way round, or on the basis of its shadier points:
not the joy, but the suffering; not the freedom, but the forms of servility and bondage;
not the justice, but the extreme imbalance in the distribution of wealth,
power and honour which, in the form of enormous inequalities,
are fertile ground for the most flagrant injustice.
And as a consequence, we should add: not the security, but the insecurity –that is,
the risks that lead to disasters and the conflicts that materialise in violence, as well as
the real or perceived vulnerability that feeds the society’s growing demand for safety.
When fear strikes, security becomes an urgent need and understanding the causes
that create insecurity is less important. And this, needless to say, has far from
negligible consequences. All it takes is one crime to hit the headlines, for example,
to provoke a wave of demands for stiffer penalties, more determined police action and,
quite often, for strict application of life sentences.

But why waste time understanding insecurity if what we want is security?
Will not we get lost in the apparently fathomless depths of the causes that feed risk
and conflict? Of what use is a good diagnosis if it does not provide the answer to
the problem? When fear strikes, security becomes an urgent need and understanding
the causes that create insecurity is less important. And this, needless to say, has far
from negligible consequences. All it takes is one crime to hit the headlines,
for example, to provoke a wave of demands for stiffer penalties, more determined
police action and, quite often, for strict application of life sentences.
Whenever there is a sudden increase in the social perception of insecurity,
it is invariably echoed by an uncontainable passion for counselling:
everyone seems to know exactly what needs to be done and, with the avalanche of
measures proposed, the ones that make headway in public opinion are the ones
that are most original, dramatic and drastic. Amongst the most popular are
the proposals for repressive action allowing the identification of culprits, individuals
or collectives  – preferably foreign –  to whom resounding measures can immediately
be applied. Blindly lashing out in this way, with total disdain for any attempt to
understand the real causes of the problem, even defying logic, seems to bring
momentary relief to a seething population anxious to restore order as soon as possible
and at almost any price. The chief victim of this profound incomprehension
of the facts behind collective anxiety is undoubtedly justice.
Certainly, the haste to drive out instability and restore order is incompatible
with the caution, calm, rigorous investigation and level-headedness that are called
for in the search for truth. Insecurity, therefore, because we underrate it,
loses its chief quality: that of pointing out the breaking points where conflicts generated
in social relations break out in the form of violence.
And so, voluntarily blinded, we are condemned to treating mere symptoms,
to chasing shadows and, in the worst cases, to aggravating the problem of insecurity
with inappropriate security strategies.
Violence is always the ignition point of a specific conflict, its most extreme
manifestation, and has to be treated with the right strategy. There is no relationship,
for example, between a multi-million-euro swindle and a fight between rival gangs.
And yet, surprisingly, we note in the media and in public opinion and government
authorities a blind faith in the miraculous effectiveness of the same old recipes
– stiffer penalties, installation of physical and electronic surveillance,
larger police forces, zero tolerance – for dealing with a range of situations
that seem to have nothing more in common than their legal description as crimes.

How else can we explain the fact that after more than three decades
of a “global war against drugs” – with colossal funding and resources –  there has been
continued growth in the number of consumers of illegal substances worldwide,
in the surface area devoted to the production of these substances and in
organised crime and corruption directly related to this illegal traffic. And the “global
war on terrorism” undertaken by the same actor seems to be going the same way,
based as it is on an incomplete diagnosis which stubbornly refuses to try and understand
the causes and only tackles the effects, so that it is irremediably condemned to
aggravating the problem it was supposed to be solving. Despite everything,
it does not seem we are looking at a simple anomaly in security policies.
Even less is it a case  of academic infatuation with diagnosis getting
in the way of effective measures against insecurity. The refusal to diagnose in depth
the causes of the so-called “drug problem” or “terrorism problem” is a prior condition
for declaring and maintaining, regardless of the tragic evidence that they have failed,
the “war on drugs”, first, and then the “war on terrorism”.
So let’s not be naïve. Deliberate scorn for an accurate diagnosis of the conflicts that all
too frequently break out in the form of violence, along with security policies that are
limited to not always harmless treatment of the effects without even trying to
approach the causes of public insecurity, make up a political stance with serious
consequences for coexistence. And in the final instance these security policies
have come to form part of the problem rather than the solution.
Text by Jaume Curbet Director of the Master’s Degree in Public Safety Policies, UOC,
published on the BCN Metropolis magazine.