Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T20:55:38.177Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The concept of security: an agenda for comparative analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Lucia Zedner
Lucia Zedner*
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The pursuit of security as a matter of domestic policy stands high on the political agenda of many Western nations and is a booming area of private investment. This repays close attention to what is meant when the concept of security is invoked as a justification of public policy or private practice. This paper examines the various meanings and differing constructions of security as a negative or positive presence, as a material or symbolic good, as a public good or private service, and as a response to external or internal threats. It observes how the language of security is differentiated also according to local legal cultures and calls for comparative analysis of the meaning and usage of the term in different jurisdictions. It suggests some possible differences in the structural arrangements for the pursuit of security that arise from differing relationships among the state, private sector and civil society. And it concludes by mapping out some apparent variants on the public-private divide that might profitably inform comparative analysis of the practices, as opposed to the rhetoric, of security.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 153 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Quoted in Melossi, D and Selmini, R ‘Social Conflict and the microphysics of crime: the experience of the Emilia-Romagna Città sicure project’ in Hope, T and Sparks, R (eds) Crime, Risk, and Insecurity (London: Routledge, 2000) p 161.Google Scholar

2. K van Limbergen ‘Belgian security policy prior to and after November 24 1991’ (1996) 4 E J Crim Policy and Research 53.

3. R Sparks ‘Perspectives on Risk and Penal Politics’ in Hope and Sparks (eds), n 1 above; R Sparks ‘Degrees of Estrangement: The cultural theory of risk and comparative penology’ (2001) 5 TheorCrim 159.

4. Sennett, R The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (London: W Norton & Co, 1998)Google Scholar.

5. S Spitzer' Security and Control in Capitalist Societies: the Fetishism of Security and the Secret thereof in Lowman, J, Menzies, R J and Palys, T S (eds) Trancarceration: Essays in the Sociology of Social Control 43–58 (Aldershot: Gower, 1987) p 50 Google Scholar.

6. Bauman, Z Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity, 1998) pp 118–120.Google Scholar

7. C Hale ‘Fear of Crime: A Review of the Literature’ (1996) 4 Int R Victimology 79 at 94–112.

8. U Ewald ‘Criminal victimization and social adaption in modernity: fear of crime and risk perception in the new Germany’ in Hope and Sparks (eds), n 1 above.

9. Bauman, n 6 above, p 117.

10. W Hollway and T Jefferson ‘The Role of Anxiety in Fear of Crime’ in Hope and Sparks (eds), n 1 above, pp 31–49; Ewald, n 8 above.

11. Ericson, R and Haggerty, K Policing the Risk Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).Google Scholar

12. Taylor, I ‘Crime, market-liberalism and the European Idea’ in Ruggerio, V et al (eds) The Newt European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe (London: Routledge: 1998) p 23.Google Scholar

13. The recent provision in Britain for known sex offenders to have their names inscribed on a sex offenders' register is a case in point.

14. L Zedner ‘The Pursuit of Security’ in Hope and Sparks (eds). n 1 above, p 203.

15. Freedman, L ‘The Concept of Security’ in Hawkesworth, M and Kogan, M (eds) Encyclopaedia of Government and Politics vol 2 (London: Routledge, 1992) p 732.Google Scholar

16. Ericson and Haggerty, n 11 above. Ch 10.

17. Quoted in Davis, M City of Quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles (London: Pimlico. 1990) p 250 Google Scholar.

18. Freedman, n 15 above, pp 730–31.

19. Freedman, n 15 above, p 731.

20. Suggested in part by Pavarini, M ‘Controlling Social Panic: Questions and Answers about Security in Italy at the End of the Millennium’ in Bergalli, R and Sumner, C (eds) Social Control and Political Order: European Perspectives at the end of the Centuty (London: Sage, 1997).Google Scholar

21. Pavarini, n 20 above, p 79.

22. Garland, D The Culture of Control (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) p 128 Google Scholar. Comparative scholars have challenged this analysis. Eg Crawford observes that ‘crime may well have new salience in everyday life but it is not a shared collective experience’: he goes on ‘the experience of France seriously questions the applicability of Garland's thesis beyond the cases of the United States and United Kingdom’: Crawford, A ‘The growth of crime prevention in France as contrasted with the English experience: Some thoughts on the politics of insecurity’ in Hughes, G, McLaughlin, E and Muncie, J (eds) Crime Prevention and Community Safety (London: Sage 2002) p 235.Google Scholar

23. Spitzer, n 5 above; L Johnston’ What is vigilantism? (1996) 36 BrJ Crim 220; I Loader ‘Consumer Culture and the Commodification of Policing and Security’ (1999) 33 Sociology 373.

24. Spitzer, n 5 above, p 47. Or Freedman's similar reflection that security ‘is achieved when bad things do not happen rather than when good things do’: Freedman. n 15 above, p 731.

25. Loader, n 23 above; Zedner. n 14 above, p 201.

26. Loader, n 23 above.

27. Garland, n 22 above.

28. In 1997, an estimated 8 million Americans were living in gated communities: van Dijk, F and de Waard, J Public and Private Crime Control: National arid International Trends (The Hague: Dutch Ministry of Justice, 2001)Google Scholar.

29. All this is should not be permitted to obscure the significant social. economic and environmental costs attendant upon becoming an ever more security consuming society: Zedner, n 14 above; van Dijk, F and de Waard, J ‘The private security industry in the Netherlands’ in Pakes, F and McKenzie, IK (eds) Law, power and justice in the Netherlands (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing: 2001)Google Scholar.

30. The Criminal Justice and Public Disorder Act 1994 in Britain, stands out as a largely symbolic response to an outburst of media-driven public hysteria about ‘new age travellers’, ‘ravers’ and squatters. The Terrorism Act 2001 is arguably, in part, a similarly ‘symbolic’ response to anxieties spawned by 11 September.

31. Pavarini, n 20 above, pp 80–81.

32. B Goold ‘Public Surveillance CCTV: Aspects of its Impact on Policing in an English Force’ (Unpublished DPM thesis, University of Oxford, 2001); Welsh, B C and Fanington, D P Crime prevention effects of closed circuit television: a systematic review Home Office Research Study 252 (London: Home Office, 2002)Google Scholar.

33. C Shearing and P Stenning ‘Modem Private Security: Its Growth and Implications’ in (1981) 3 Crime and Justice: an annual review of research at 196.

34. Jones, T and Newburn, T Private Security and Public Policing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) p 29 Google Scholar.

35. Jones and Newburn, n 34 above, pp 46–51, 106–17.

36. I Loader ‘Thinking Normatively about Private Security’ (1997) 24 J Law and Society 377; Zedner, n 14 above.

37. F Ocqueteau ‘Legitimation of the private security sector in France’(1993) 1 EJ Crim Policy and Research 108.

38. Loader, n 36 above, at 386; van Dijk and de Waard, n 29 above.

39. Pavarini, n 20 above, p 79.

40. Bauman, n 6 above, p 116.

41. Bauman, n 6 above, p 117.

42. Bauman, n 6 above, p 117.

43. Shearing and Stenning, n 33 above, at 195.

44. Eg it might be argued that the Private Security Industry Act 2001 is an attempt to wrest back some measure of control by the state in Britain.

45. Brown, M and Pratt, J (eds) Dangerous Offenders: Punishment and Social Order (London: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar.

46. Garland, n 22 above, p 49.

47. Downes, D and Morgan, R ‘The Skeletons in the Cupboard: The Politics of Law and Order at the Turn of the Millennium’ in Maguire, M, Morgan, R and Reiner, R (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 2002) p 300.Google Scholar

48. Kunz, K-L (ed) Bürgerfreiheit und Sicherheit: Perspektiven von Strafrechtstheorie und Kriminalpolitik (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000)Google Scholar esp ch ‘Innere Sicherheit und Kriminalitätsvorsorge im liberalen Rechtsstaat’; Gössner, R (ed) Mythos Sicherheit: Der hilfllose Schrei nach dem starken Staat (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1995)Google Scholar; A Scherr ‘Sicherheitsbedürfnisse. Soziale Ausschliessung und Kriminalisierung’ (1997) 4 Kriminologisches J 256.

49. L Zedner ‘In Pursuit of the Vernacular: Comparing Law and Order Discourse in Britain and German’ (1995) 4 Social and Legal Studies 517at 521.

50. Albrecht, H-J ‘Immigration, crime and unsafety’ in Crawford, A (ed) Crime and Insecurity: The governance of safety in Europe (Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2002) pp 159–85.Google Scholar

51. Feeley, M and Simon, J ‘Actuarial Justice: the Emerging New Criminal Law’ in Nelken, D (ed) The Futures of Criminology (London: Sage, 1994) p 181.Google Scholar

52. Zedner, n 49 above; T Hope and R Sparks ‘Risk, insecurity and the politics of law and order’ in Hope and Sparks (eds), n 1 above, p 9. As D Melossi has observed, ‘the usage of identical words often obscures the degree to which they are embedded in the different history of different place, as well as being articulated through (partially) different discourses’: D Melossi ‘The cultural embeddedness of social control: Reflections on the comparison of Italian and North American cultures concerning punishment’ (2001) 5 Theor Crim 403 at 405.

53. A good example here is that of ‘zero tolerance’, whose usage has been quite different on either side of the Atlantic. See T Jones and T Newbum ‘Learning from Uncle Sam? Exploring US Influences on British Crime Control Policy’ (2002) 15 Governance 97.

54. Teubner, G ‘Legal Irritants: How Undying Law Ends up in New Divergences’ in Hall, P A and Soskice, D (eds) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) pp 417–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. Melossi, n 52 above, at 405.

56. Garland, D Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1990) p 199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57. Garland, n 22 above, p 194.

58. D Nelken, ‘Comparing Criminal Justice’ in Maguire, Morgan and Reiner (eds), n 47 above, pp 175–202.

59. Though this has not stopped comparative scholars from pointing out the limitations to Garland's thesis. Eg Crawford ‘Garland's analysis has less relevance to some continental European societies where the state and the law have come to assume a fundamentally different cultural place and play a different social role from those in Anglo-American jurisdictions’: Crawford, n 22 above, p 235. See also Sparks, n 3 above; L Zedner ‘Dangers of Dystopias in Penal Theory’ (2002) 22 Oxford JLS 341.

60. There are exceptions: see E Girling, I Loader and R Sparks Crime and Social Change in Middle England: Questions of Social Change in an English Town (London: Routledge, 2000).

61. Marshall, Ih How exceptional is the United States? Crime trends in Europe and the US’ (1996) 4 Google Scholar E J Crim Policy and Research 7 at 29.

62. On a recent sabbatical in Chicago, I had some difficulty persuading criminological colleagues that gun carrying among teenagers was not everywhere the preeminent problem of crime control.

63. Shapland, J ‘Criminology in Europe’ in Heidensohn, F and Farrell, M (eds) Crime in Europe (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar; Ruggerio, V et al (eds) The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe (London: Routledge: 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64. Marshall, note 61 above.

65. Tham, H ‘Crime and the Welfare State: The case of the United Kingdom and Sweden’ in Ruggerio, V et al (eds) The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe (London: Routledge: 1998).Google Scholar

66. Currie, E Is America winning the war on crime - and should Britain follow our example?’ (1996) 25 Google Scholar Crime Justice Matters 6; Garland, n 22 above.

67. Heidensohn, F and Farrell, M (eds) Crime in Europe (London: Routledge, 1991) p 7.Google Scholar

68. Taylor, n 12 above.

69. Nelken, D ‘Whom can you trust? The Future of Comparative Criminology’ in Nelken, D (ed) The Futures of Criminology (London: Sage, 1994) pp 220–21.Google Scholar

70. I Loader ‘Policing, Securitization and Democratization in Europe’ (2002, forthcoming) 2(2) Crim Justice.

71. The creation of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are recent cases in point. Unleashed from rule by Westminster, the Scottish legal system (always different to that in England) is Free to develop crime control policies in accord with political culture and local mandate.

72. Crawford, A Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Politics. Policies and Practices (London: Longman. 1998)Google Scholarch 7 ‘Comparative experiences’.

73. Hall, P A and Soskice, D (eds) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74. U Yanay ‘Personal Safety and the Mixed Economy of Protection’ (1995) 29 Social Policy and Administration 110.

75. van Swaaningen, R Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe (London: Sage, 1997) p 210ffGoogle Scholar.

76. Melossi and Selmini, n 1 above, pp 153–54.

77. Through the regional Città sicure project started in 1994.

78. Lacey, N and Zedner, L 1998 Community in German Criminal Justice’ (1998)7 Google Scholar Social and Legal Studies 7.

79. Crawford, A The Local Governance of Crime: Appeals to Community and Partnership (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

80. Prostitution, eg, was tackled not through the criminal law, but through administrative powers relating to traffic regulation and hygiene.

81. Pavarini, n 20 above, p 90.

82. R Baier and Th Feltes ‘Kommunale Kriminalprävention’ (1994) 11 Kriminalistik 693; W Lehne ‘Präventionsräte, Stadteilforen, Sicherheitspartnershaften. Die Reorganisation des Politikfeldes “Innere Sicherheit”’ in Trotha, V et al (eds) Politischer Wandel, Gesellschaft und Kriminulitätsdiskurse (Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag, 1996)Google Scholar; van Dijk and de Waard, n 29 above. Although it is arguable that the very strength of local government itself acts as an inhibition on informal community initiatives. Albrecht, n 50 above; Lacey and Zedner, n 77 above, p 14.

83. Crawford, n 22 above, at 219.

84. Ocqueteau, n 37 above.

85. van Dijk and de Waard, n 29 above.

86. Ocqueteau, n 37 above, at 118.

87. Shearing and Stenning, n 33 above, at 240.

88. Jones and Newburn, n 34 above, p 105.

89. Though it is arguable that the very distinction between public and private space is being eroded by the increasing intrusion of private security services into public areas once considered the sole domain of the police Van Dijk and de Waard, n 28 above.

90. Note Pavarini's sardonic observation, ‘The two strategies - more penal justice and more private security - are not only congruent but also mutually enhancing, despite their being fruitless’: Pavarini, n 20 above, p 85.

91. In the Netherlands, eg, in the 1980s and 90s, the government strongly promoted the policing particularly of semi-private space by commercial security firms. Van Dijk and de Waard. n 29 above.

92. As Stenson has observed: ‘prudential techniques are exclusive rather than inclusive … they involve a greater reliance on commercial insurance for home insurance, security services and so on and they also involve a narrowing of the communities of risk sharers, excluding those deemed to be unreliable, dangerous or too poor’: Stenson, K ‘Communal Security as Government - The British Experience’ in Hammerschicht, W (ed) Jahrbuch für Rechts und Kriminalsoziologie (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1996) p 109 Google Scholar; Young, J ‘From Inclusive to Exclusive Society: Nightmares in the European Dream’ in Ruggerio, V et al (eds) The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe (London: Routledge: 1998) pp 64–91.Google Scholar

93. See R Ericson, D Barry and A Doyle (2000) ‘The Moral Hazards of Neo-Liberalism: Lessons From the Private Insurance Industry’ Economy and Society 29 at 532.

94. Eg subscribers to private alarm centres in the Netherlands grew 1,100% in the 15 years to 1998: Van Dijk and de Waard, n 28 above.

95. Hughes, G Understanding Crime Prevention: Social Control, risk and lute modernity (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998) esp ch 7Google Scholar.

96. Jones and Newburn. n 34 above.

97. de Waard, J Private Security in Europe’ (1993) 1 Google Scholar E J Crim Policy and Research 108; van Dijk and de Waard, n 28 above.

98. Van Dijk and de Waard, n 18 above.

99. A Crawford’ The Partnership Approach to Community Crime Prevention: Corporatism at the Local Level? (1994) 3 Social and Legal Studies 497.

100. Ocqueteau, n 37 above, at 114.

101. They are not included here, partly for lack of space and partly because I have attempted to address them in previous articles: N Laccy and L Zedner ‘Discourses of Community in Criminal Justice’ (1995) 72 J Law and Society 316: Lacey and Zedner, n 77 above; Zedner, n 14 above. See also Crawford, n 98 above: Crawford, n 78 above; Crawford, n 71 above: and Hughes. n 94 above, ch 7.

102. Gambetta, D The Sicilian Mafia (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; U Yanay ‘Co-opting vigilantism: government response to community action for personal safety’ (1994) 14 J Public Policy 383: Johnston, n 33 above.