INSECURITY
08/2010
When we look up “insecurity” in the dictionary we find definitions such as: “The condition or quality of being insecure; lack of safety; danger; hazard”; “The anxiety you experience when you feel vulnerable and insecure” or “The state of being subject to danger or injury.” However, when we talk about it, we refer simultaneously to two concepts: one of them is objective and linked to the criminal events that occur on a daily basis. These events are measured by crime statistics which inform us of the insecurity rate. For example, the UN analyzes insecurity according to the rate per 100,000 habitants of intentional homicides, figures provided by the Pan American Health Organization studying health situation in the Americas and Basic Indicators from 2008. According to this source, Argentina has a rate of 5.3 points, one of the lowest together with Peru (3.0), Bolivia (3.7) and Uruguay (4.7) and in comparison to Colombia with 45.5 points, Venezuela with 32.5 points and Brasil with 26.2 points. But we have to bear in mind that in Columbia the insecurity rate is high because of the high proportion of drug dealers. Similarly, Brasil also has an ever-increasing rate due to demographic reasons and criminal activity itself. So far we have talked about mere figures.
The other concept connected with insecurity, however, is subjective and has to do with what people feel about this predicament. This perception is the result of both what people experience and hear about how vulnerable we all are in the presence of attackers. In addition to this, People have the impression that we are not safe because the media constantly bombard us with alarming pieces of news.
All in all, insecurity is regarded in our country from two viewpoints. Same believe that it is objective and theefore real while others sustain that it is subjective and then just a sensation mainly created by the media.
CAUSES
In the past, crimes were commeted mainly because the downtrodden didn´t have Access to education. In addition to this, income inequality, that is the unfair distribution of wealth, led many people to perpetrate offenses against property and people´s lives.
At present, this situation hasn´t considerably changed. On the contrary, insecurity is on the rise. This is so as there are many unemployed people who resort to crime to live by and to feed their famalies. Another reason that contributes to the increase in criminal activity is linked with the onset of drug dealing. To make matters worse, some police officers are so corrupt that they accept bribes and help criminals to get away with their crimes, leaving society defenseless.
TYPES OF CRIMES
Regardless whether this is an objective statistic or a subjective perception, when we think about insecurity, we reckon different kinds of thefts. Related to vehicles, we can find three different kinds of crimes: Hijack, which is to use violence or threats to take control of a plane, vehicle, or ship and bicycles and car thefts. Car theft has considerably increased in Argentina. And this is so because of the illegal business of the spare parts. When in need to buy a spare part for a car, we have two options: the first one is to buy it in an authorized shop and the second one is to buy stolen spare parts in a clandestine shop. The main difference between such options is prices: the legal store is more expensive than the illegal one. Unfortunately, as a large number of people opt to buy spare parts in an unauthorized shop, the demand increases and the whole business thrives. For instance, junk yards, the places where cars are divided into parts, have multiplied across our country. Finally, the most serious consequence produced by this illegitimate commerce is the growing violence perpetrated by thieves. Such mindless violence is seen when thieves assault car owners to steal their vehicles. In doing so, criminals severely wound or, still worse, murder innocent drivers. Inevitably, car crimes are going to be on the rise if we carry on purchasing stolen car parts. Sadly, last week we heard on the news the case of Diego Deandreis. Diego was a 22-year-old Federal Police officer was shot dead when he resisted a robbery attempt outside his house in the Buenos Aires province town of Pilar, police said. The heist took place at 1am, when Diego Emanuel Deandreis was arriving home in his car. After shooting him twice, the two robbers snatched his weapon and fled. Later, two youths, aged 23 and 17, were arrested in connection with the case.
There are also property crimes, or robberies, when money or other things are stolen from a bank, shop, etc. Under this category we can find burglaries, which consist in illegally entering a house or office. This is one of the most usual crimes and one that has increased throughout the years, even in gated neighbourhoods where security should be assured. Shoplifting, for example, is the crime of taking things from shops without paying for them. The ones who commit this illegal act are sometimes kleptomaniacs, such as Winona Ryder, a famous actress who cannot control her mental illness of stealing things. Last but not least, there is lotting, stealing things from shops or other buildings, especially during a war or at a time when the police or army have lost control of an area. This is something that happened in Argentina as a consequence of the economic crisis of 2001.
Something that is alarmingly increasing is bank robbery. In the past only professionals dared to rob banks after years of careful study. That’s why they weren’t so usual. Today, it’s not strange to read in the newspaper that more and more ‘inexpert’ thieves break in banks. However, there are also ‘expert’ thieves who very carefully plan a bank robbery. For example, last March, in the Banco Macro robbery, about 218 safe deposit boxes were opened. In addition, criminals wrote on a wall that they were the architects of “the millennium theft”. The attackers wrote in the walls with broken bricks a phrase like “it’s not the robbery of the century, but that of the millennium”, referring to the Acasusso bank robbery in January 13th 2006. Although bank assaults, as well as robberies in general don’t involve threat or force against a victim, sometimes, victims are attacked, only that outside the building, after making banking transactions. Such is the recent case of Carolina Piparo, who was assaulted and the victim of a bank-exit hold-up. She was shot by two robbers who were on a motorbike. The woman was pregnant and had to undergo a Cesarean section to give birth to her baby, who died last Thursday.
People are also attacked in the streets. When a person’s money or things are stolen by someone else who uses threats or violence to do so, we say that he or she has been robbed or got mugged. Another kind of crime is snatching- we’ve heard many times of people whose bags or rucksacks were snatched. And then there are also pick-pocketters, people who are so well trained that their victims don’t even notice when their cell phones or wallets are being stolen.
SOLUTIONS
In Argentina, insecurity is one of the most controversial state of affairs, apart from an issue that worries the whole of the population. All these types of crime that we have been talking about are far from alien to us and have been part of our social reality for quite a long time now. Almost all of us have been “touched” by insecurity in one way or another and this is why this subject arouses such strong feelings. Everybody is talking about it, insecurity is a matter that has become vox populi. People who are more conservative, strongly believe that positive measures should be taken to battle crime, such as sending criminals to jail regardless their age. Some famous celebrities have made some strong declarations in this respect, asking for “mano dura”. Other people consider that preventive measures should be taken instead. These measures, such as providing employment, education and health care for the poorest people - who are who tend to commit crimes - are based on a better distribution of the nation’s wealth and consist in allowing for the satisfaction of people’s needs before they have to resort to commit crimes for satisfying their needs.
CONCLUSION
We’ve talked about what insecurity is, we have questioned whether it is a perception or mere reality, also of which types of crime it is related to, and we agree that this is a subject that worries us all and arouses strong feelings. Being aware of all of these issues related to insecurity and acknowledging which its causes are, we consider that we may attempt put forward our opinion in respect to how we think that insecurity should be fought. Personally, we believe that preventive measures should be taken, that money should be spent mostly in education, that job opportunities should be created for all the people and that drug dealing should be fought. We also consider crime should be strongly penalized after committed as well, only that criminals should be kept in better prisons where their integrity is not threatened and where their behaviour is corrected.
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