Colombia: Surveillance, Private Security and Gun Control 1994 -2013

Abstract

The culture of reglating behavior in the defense of human life is as ancient as social interaction itself. Both are necessarily mutually related in order to achieve coexistence, security, and justice, according to the covenants established in each society. In the modern State, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Citizen led to institutionalizing public force to achieve these objectives. In the western world, this operates from the principle of “monopoly of legitimate physical violence” postulated by Weber. This is the political device for the distribution and conservation of power.

However, the great transformation, “during the second half of the twentieth century, involving the global economic markets and the system of nation states through daily life and the psychological dynamic of families and individuals,” according to David Garland (2005, p. 141) generated a shift in the matters handled by the State, including people’s security, tranquility, care for their assets, and elements in the environment that make life possible.

In Colombia, the force of law and order predominantly focuses its attention on high-impact crime, and very little on citizen conflicts affecting coexistence. Meanwhile, private surveillance and security have skyrocketed in caring for the integrity and assets of private citizens, through mechanisms and means such as firearms, which had formerly been for
the exclusive use of the members of forces of law and order.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5377/rpsp.v4i1.1576