Crafting public security: demilitarisation, penal state reform and security policy-making in post-authoritarian Chile

ABSTRACT

Here I dissect the institutionalisation of ‘citizen security’ as a category and sector of public policy in post-authoritarian Chile. Deploying a Bourdieusian field theory approach and questioning narratives of security policies as responses to criminality or adaptations to democratic values, I argue that the construction of a new security policy sector – with a new consensus (distinct from that of National Security), with reformed police and courts in its core, leaving aside the military and extending beyond traditional agencies – derives from (i) struggles over policing and criminal justice reforms, (ii) tensions between the military and democratic authorities in democracy and (iii) performative integrations of the new policy components. These mechanisms explain the evolution of the security problem and the progressive aggregation of bureaucratic agencies and methods to the ‘public security policy’ – policing, judiciary, urban design, prisons and prevention plans. I close discussing alternative accounts of institutional variations in security governance in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• Security
• public policies
• democratisation
• police
• criminal justice
• Chile

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Bergman and Whitehead, “Introduction. Criminality and Citizens Security,” 5–8.

2. Ibid., 8; Bailey and Dammert, Public Security and Police Reform; Uildriks, Policing Insecurity; and Ungar, “Crime and City in Latin America.”

3. Neild, “From National Security to Citizen”; Bailey “Introduction: New Security Challenges”; and Estevez, “Public and Citizen Security in South.”

4. Uildriks, Public Insecurity, 2.

5. Dubois, “The fields of public policy.”

6. Ibid; Bigo, “International Political Sociology.” For a basic introduction to Bourdieu´s ‘structural constructivism’ se Wacquant, “Towards a Social Praxeology” 7–12.

7. Bailey, “Introduction: New Security Challenges,” 12.

8. See Dammert, “From National Security to Citizen”; and Oviedo, “Democracia y seguridad ciudadana en Chile.”

9. Foro de Expertos, Diagnóstico de la Seguridad Ciudadana.

10. See Bailey and Dammert, Public Security and Police Reform; and Kessler, Cuestiones de Sociología.

11. Dubois, Cultural Policy in France and “Fields of public policy.”

12. ‘International Political Sociology.’

13. Dubois, Cultural policy in France, 3.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. For a sketch of national security see Bailey, “Introduction: New Security Challenges.”

17. C.A.S.E. Collective, “Critical approaches to security,” 458; and Bigo, “International Political Sociology,” 126.

18. Dubois, “Fields of public policy.”

19. Ibid., 203.

20. C.A.S.E. Collective “Critical approaches to security in Europe,” 458.

21. Hilgartner and Bosk, “Rise and Fall of Social Problems.”

22. Dubois, “Fields of public policy,” 3.

23. Iturralde Sanchez “Ooverno neoliberal da insegurança social na América Latina.”

24. Garland, “The penal state.”

25. Hathazy, Democratizing Leviathan.

26. Ibid, chapters 2 and 3.

27. Emirbayer and Jhonson, “Bourdieu and organizational analysis.”

28. For a genealogical reconstruction of these groups since the 1960s, see author, pp.

29. Revista de Carabineros, May 1986, 42.

30. Gonzales Errazuriz, “Carabineros de Chile y Misión.”

31. Ibid.

32. Boeninger, Democracia en Chile, 427, also Acevedo Arriaza, “Continuity in Post-Dictatorhip Period,” 90.

33. Acevedo Arriaza, “Continuity in Post-Dictatorship Period.”

34. Ibid; Fruhling, “Terrorismo en coyuntura actual.”

35. See Fruhling “Terrorismo en coyuntura actual.”

36. Ibid., 45.

37. National Institute of Justice, Policing in Emerging Democracies.

38. See Tudela, “Prevencion del delito y seguridad ciudadana,” Figueroa Serrano “Seguridad ciudadana: Tarea de Estado.”

39. Sunkel, “Medios de Comunicación y violencia.”

40. Dominguez-Berrueta, et al., “Reforma policial y constitución”; Mera Figueroa, “Seguridad ciudadana, violencia y delincuencia.”

41. Ramos and Guzman de Luigi, La guerra y La paz ciudadana.

42. Ibid., 71, 74.

43. Carabineros de Chile, El camino de La modernización.

44. Stange Oelckers, “Exposición del Sr. Director General.”

45. Dirección de Seguridad Publica e Informaciones (DISPI), Seguridad Ciudadana, Democracia y Participación, 1995.

46. Ibid., 8.

47. Fruhling, “Propuestas diseño de políticas,” 225.

48. Ibid., 226–7.

49. Carabineros, Camino de La Modernización, 9.

50. Ibid., 29–44.

51. Ibid., 9.

52. Ibid., 53,123.

53. Ministerio de Hacienda, Programa Plan Cuadrante de Seguridad Preventiva.

54. Carabineros, Desarrollo Institucional, 105.

55. With these technical developments Carabineros was also able to prevent the importation of Zero-tolerance to Chile by the local right-wing municipal governments and to the creation of municipal forces. In 1996 Lavin, mayor of Las Condes contacted the New York based Manhattan Institute about William Bratton’s Zero-tolerance policing model – which, just as the Plan Cuadrante, is based on intense policing following management schemes. When in 1998 Lavin created a municipal police following Zero-tolerance, Carabineros legally detained the urban guards, and objected the creation of the force arguing ‘it would mean an unequal provision of security to the poorer municipalities.’ They argued with studies determining the ‘security demand’ of each municipality and the ‘available supply’ (Interview General Inspector Vera, April, 2009). The government-backed Carabineros and Zero Tolerance programmes’ importation were defeated.

56. CEJA, Justice report of the Americas.

57. See Lunecke and Candina, “Formación en Derechos Humanos.”

58. Within the criminal courts field we find agents primarily located within the juridical field, that is ‘site of a competition for the monopoly over the right to determine the law’ (Bourdieu 1987:817) based on the ‘recognized capacity to interpret a corpus of texts sanctifying a correct or legitimate vision of the social world’ (1987:818). We find also judges, prosecutors, and pubic defence lawyers that are part of the juridical field, but they deploy their juridical capitals as they are part of the penal sector of the bureaucratic field monopolising the public authority to investigate and adjudicate penal cases. We find, finally, the central government and political agents, academics, and the professions and the journalistic fields.

59. Cavallo, Salazar, and Sepulveda, Historia oculta régimen militar, 559.

60. Ministerio de Justicia de Chile, Informe Final de la Comisión.

61. During the 1980s, they developed tools to ‘rationalize the administration of justice’ (Chile, 1980:106) and converted investment project-evaluation techniques into standards for judicial policies. They produced ‘a project evaluation analysis’ for computerising justice in 1986 (ODEPLAN-CIAPEP 1986), and another for the adoption of public legal defence services in 1988 (ODEPLAN-CIAPEP 1988)‘Social project evaluation analysis’ was developed by former development economist Ernesto Fontaine, adapting foreign investment analysis to evaluate the ‘social’ i.e. economic benefits of public expenses (See Fontaine, “Applied Economics in Action”).

62. Palacios Muñoz, “La reforma procesal penal.”

63. Author, [2013]: 144–5.

64. Valdivieso, “La experiencia chilena.”

65. Correa Sutil, Cuadernos de Análisis Jurídico; Riego, “Prisión durante el proceso.”

66. Guzman, “Justicia y Seguridad,” 89.

67. See note 56 above.

68. o develop these plans, and put them into action, the Government of Chile obtained loans from the Interamerican Development Bank, first in 2001, with the “Vulnerable Suburbs Support Program, (TC0206002) of U$S 910, 000 and then with the U$S 10,000,000 (CH-0178)” A Safer Chile Program Innovation Loan.

69. For a narrative description of these programmes see Dammert, ”From National Security to Citizen.”

70. Foro de Expertos, Diagnóstico de La Seguridad .

71. Dávila, Seguridad ciudadana: Actores y discusión,45.

72. Dammert, “de La seguridad nacional,” 136.

73. See Puryer, “Thinking politics,” 8.

74. Foro de Expertos, Diagnóstico de la Seguridad, 7.

75. Ibid., 84.

76. Dubois, “Field of public policy,” 203.

77. Foro de Expertos, Diagnóstico de La seguridad, 135.

78. Ministerio del Interior, Política Nacional de Seguridad Ciudadana.

79. Ministerio del Interior, Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad Ciudadana and Plan Nacional de Seguridad Pública.

80. de Lima and Trindade, “Seguranca Pública.”

81. Ibid., 1.

82. de Lima, Sinhoretto and Buenos, “Gestao da vida e da seguranca.”

83. Iturralde Sanchez, “O governo neoliberal da insegurança.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Andrew Mellon Latin American Sociology Program, University of California Berkeley; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina [Grant number PIP 2015-2016 # 11220150100157CO].

Notes on contributors

Paul Hathazy

Paul Hathazy is a researcher at the National Research and Technical Council (CONICET) of Argentina, working at the Center for the Study of Culture and Society, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. His work examines comparatively the evolution of state coercion rationales and practices in Latin America, with a focus on Argentina and Chile. He is currently working on the transformation of the penal state in the Chilean and Argentine transitions from authoritarian to democratic regimes and on a comparative study of the institutionalisation of public security as a category of public policy. His work has appeared in journals, including International Sociology, Comparative Sociology, Crime, Law and Social Change, Dilemas (Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social), European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Kriminologisches Journal.