Crime‐Control in the Post‐Wall Era: The Menace of Security

Abstract

Over the past ten to fifteen years, an increasing number of social issues have become linked, and then subordinated, to security policy. This policy area has witnessed a paradigm shift, with the emergence of a new security mentality. The crumbling of the walls built up during the Cold War, and the collapse of the Soviet empire, meant the disappearance of the East versus West polarity. And as this world order, based on a balance of terror, passed into history, the nature of the global threat situation was transformed. The antagonisms of the Cold War had hardly had time to cease creating fear before new threat images emerged onto the scene. Unlike the Cold War situation, where world peace was threatened by a frenetic arms race between two highly concrete superpowers, the perceived threats of the 1990s became increasingly vague. The military menace was superseded by what was said to be a much more diffuse criminal threat. For what is it that lies concealed behind such concepts as ‘cross‐border crime’, ‘organized crime’, ‘terrorism’ and the like? Previously, security policy analysts had been able to localize the source of a given threat with precision. Their benchmark was now gone, however. Once the established geographical demarcations between Us and Them ceased to apply, it was found that the enemy might instead be in our midst.

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