Citizen insecurity in Latin American cities : The intersection of spatiality and identity in the politics of protection

Abstract

On May 10, 2010 The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published its Report on Citizen Security and Human Rights. The Report addressed the problem of the high levels of violence throughout post-dictatorship Latin American democracies and the insecurity and fear engendered amongst citizens. The Report highlighted the high vulnerability of youth and urban poor to violence, the failure of the state to protect victims, the growing privatization of security and the resort to repressive measures as a solution to crime control. The stated aim of the Report was to ‘change public policies on citizen security, changing the focus of attention from the repression to the prevention of crime and violence’ (IACHR 2010). Of greatest concern was the impact of high levels of violence on public confidence in democratic governance, the rule of law and justice. From the perspective of the IACHR Report growing citizen security was an index of state crisis and a failure of the rule of law pointing to the urgent need to implement human rights policies. The concept ‘citizen security’ was coined in Latin America during transition to democracy to distinguish ‘security’ from its earlier use by authoritarian regimes to refer to the security of the state, not citizens. Citizen security relates to individuals and groups and assumes a human rights perspective on protection. The purpose of the IACHR Report was to establish how a ‘right to security from crime or interpersonal or social violence expressly’ can be inferred from the obligation of the state to protect the individual. In the response to the crisis of insecurity engendered by pervasive violence the IACHR sets out to codify a new right, ‘the right of citizen security’. The Report challenges the usual resort to traditional mano dura (hard-lined) policies employed to address citizen-security problems. It argues that the securitization of the urban poor and the introduction of ‘measures like preventative detention, a lower age of criminal impunity, higher imprisonment rates, and participation of the armed forces and private security forces in domestic security issues amount to reactionary policies that do not necessarily solve the problem of elevated crime and homicide rates’ (O’Loughlin 2010). Latin America ranks second in the global homicide rate statistics (UNDOC 2011). While certainly alarming this continental figure distorts the uneven distribution of

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