ARGENTINA-CRIME: Insecurity and Violence Becoming Basic to City Life

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 23 1997 (IPS) - The security barricades that surround many buildings in Buenos Aires, and the number of other empty shops and businesses that are barred and shuttered underlines the critical state of the public security system in the Argentine capital.

After unemployment and corruption, the lack of security here causes the most concern among the city’s inhabitants, according to a recent survey. Sociologist Graciela Romer, goes further in stating that “insecurity and violence are becoming basic elements of city culture.”

These days more people who decide to live outside the city centre, in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, buy land in enclosed neighborhoods which are protected by walls and security agents from one of the 250 companies authorized to provide weapons to their employees.

A number of restaurants, despite being far from the center of town, close their doors with a key every time a client enters. The same is happening in pharmacies – particularly prone to armed robbery – and in a variety of businesses, even in daylight hours.

After the attempts against the Israeli Embassy in 1992, and the attack against the Israeli Mutual Assistance Society of Argentina in 1994 in which 86 people died, Jewish institutions now are easily recognized by their guard emplacements plus cement barrels and secuity barricades that surround the buildings.

The same Jewish community organizations that once were ignored by passers-by now are noticable immediately as there is there is no school, synagogue, association or Israeli club that doesn’t have those features which are like a certfdicate of both the lack of security and the impunity of criminals.

In a city where crime is rising steadily, and with it corruption citizens are paying for armed protection, sometimes even police officer, to guard their residential areasblock.

According to the latest survey, 89 percent of people questioned in in Buenos Aires believe that crime and violence has grown alarmingly in the last two years and 47 percent of them claim to have been the victim of some type of crime during that period. The National Institute of Statistic and Censuses confirms that in the whole country crimes, which had decreased between 1991 and 1993, have begun to grow in number again since that time.

The recent probe, conducted by the city government, was carriued out with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP, the Center for Citizen Control and the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS).

Anthropologist Sofia Tiscornia of CELS and lawyer Marta Oyhanarte of the Center for Citizen Control agree in their evaluation that there was a high maturity level in group that was questioned, both in their understanding the causes of crime as well as the ways to combat it.

Oyhanarte maintained that citizens clearly related the issuie of lack of security and the increase in crime with corruption and lack of punishment and, for that reason, wanted to see changes made uin dealing with the problem.

Tiscornia, an expert in the study of police corruption and abuse, told IPS that in the light of the survey’s findings it is “fundamental to discuss what kind of security forces we want, and which ones we don’t want any more.”

Of those surveyed, 75 per cent blamed the increase in crime to “the worsening of the economy.” Even more, 91 percent, considered that in order to combat crime it is necessary to fight the causes of social marginalization.

The second cause of crime most cited by those surveyed is the increase in drug use among youth (55 per cent) and the third most important factor for those questioned is the “deficiency in police control” (46 per cent).

When asked to propose solutions, those consulted rejected repression and instead proposed that control be increased, that the police should be purged, that punishments should be stiffened (although in general they don’t support capital punishment) and that the prison system should be made more efficient.

Some 81 percent of respondents were against the idea of having firearms in the home, 97 percent thought prevention is better than repression, and 70 percent thought that improving the economy “is the only solution” for combating delinquency. (FIN-IPS-mv-dg-pr-dp-mk-97)