PUBLIC SECURITY POLICIES IN SPAIN. ANALYSIS FROM CRIMINOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Objective: Public safety is considered a component of social welfare, where, in general, through a rule of law that generates suitable conditions for development, and generates in the citizenry the full confidence that life, patrimony and other legal assets are exempt from danger. All this, together with a number of other factors, make up what Ullrich Beck (1992) called the Risk Society, which can be summarized as the increase in social demand for control of all dangerous elements of human origin. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the process and design of public policies aimed at reducing crime. Public security policies have become the main element in every nation to try to reduce the problem of public insecurity. Spain has moved from a strictly punitive model against crime to a preventive approach, which has resulted in improving conditions and environment in the population, to promote other types of activities that limit or move the individual away from criminal behavior, with the objective of identifying the action plan followed by public safety policies implemented in Spain in order to reduce crime.

Methodology: In order to carry out this work, a pure (basic) research has been carried out with the purpose of broadening and deepening the knowledge of the study. The method used was the qualitative one, by means of material and cultural sources valuable information has been obtained to be able to expose the problem. Due to the external characteristics of the sources consulted, bibliographic and documentary sources were used, since the process of techniques used for the collection, selection, classification and analysis of the information will serve us, a priori, for the elaboration of the research on public security policies, observing and reflecting systematically on the theoretical realities from different criminological perspectives. All the biographical and documentary research carried out for the realization of the work, have followed the selection criteria of relevance, completeness and timeliness.

Results: In order to measure security, we must pay attention to both the objective dimension, related to the incidence of registered criminal events, and its subjective dimension, related to the perception of the danger of passing through a certain space. A significant number of crimes are suffered by a very limited number of people who are victimized repeatedly. Moreover, it is common for a small group of offenders to be responsible for a significant portion of all crimes. If we complement this perspective with geographical (hot spots), temporal and contagion aspects, we will be able to establish more effective crime prevention and reduction mechanisms. Recurrent victimization surveys would reinforce the total vision of security and prevention.

Conclusions: To prevent crime, public authorities should turn to Criminology and complement their public safety agendas through situational prevention models, committing themselves to apply appropriate measures based on scientific findings and always evaluating their results through quality standards, in order to be efficient in the use of public resources. It is hoped that public security policies in general will be able to shape a proposal as a medium to long term approach to reduce the incidence of crime, but necessarily, conceiving the criminal phenomenon as an activity that, to a greater or lesser extent, will continue to be present in societies.