your quote of the day

[kat_lair]

"Individuals who live under conditions of pervasive insecurity tend to make demands for what they judge to be “tough” anticrime measures (more police, more police powers, crackdowns on this offence or those suspects, stiffer sentencing, harsher penal regimes, and so on) in ways that display impatience with informed democratic deliberation, seek to suspend or abandon basic rights, foster hostility toward minorities and outsiders, and risk melding their interests and identities with those of the state whose “protective” power they seek to mobilize. This process is vicious and circular because once such demands are met in the terms in which they are presented, it becomes difficult to create the political and cultural conditions wherein the pace of such measures can be slowed, or a change or reversal of direction effected—thereby effecting a potentially endless “ratcheting up” in police numbers, or incarceration rates, or curtailments of basic liberties. And if such actions are perceived to have “failed,” or are ideologically depicted in those terms— because crime rates go up, or a child is abducted, or a group of youths run amok, or another terrorist outrage occurs—this overwhelmingly prompts calls for still “tougher” measures—only this time with a heavier dosage. A democracy- and liberty-eroding spiral is thus entered in ways it becomes hard to escape. A form of security politics gets entrenched that does much to put at risk democratic principles and basic rights, while doing little to make citizens either any safer or any more secure. As the “war on terror” is reminding us once again, anxious citizens make bad democrats." - Loader, 2006: 216



Full Ref:
Loader, I. (2006). ‘Policing, Recognition, and Belonging.’ The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 605 (1): 201-221.

Comments

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a good summary of the processes I understand but sometimes find hard to explain to others, yeah.