The governmentality of security through the environmental situational prevention of crime. The case of Rosario (1995-2016)

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the governmentality of security prevention of crime as a prolific intervention device in Rosario from 1995 to 2016. We aim, on the one hand, to describe public government initiatives aimed at modifying and improving urban situations and/or environments to reduce opportunities for criminal acts, in an attempt to provide a «safe» public space; and on the other hand, identify crime prevention initiatives that start from citizens trying to find ways in which they engage in self-government themselves. Our purpose, then, is to rebuild the governance device through preventive logic. The sophistication of government technologies are especially attractive to our study and, in this sense, we consider it vital to focus on them by offering an analysis that allows us to recompose a possible map —not unique or unequivocal— of combinations and spinning of the discursive and extra-bankruptcy matrix of neoliberal art of governing from the local experience. This article is based on the analysis of official documents, local media and semi-structured interviews with officials municipal workers, key informant and member of a Civil Society organization, who have worked in areas related to our research topic.