How to understand security and insecurity

Security and insecurity may mean different things to different people depending on context and perspective. Too often, however, security agencies and policy makers on various levels treat “security” from a purely physical perspective. Examples of this include securing a territory against external aggressions or placing focus solely upon protecting the state and its people from physical harm caused by insurgents, militants, and the like. With this understanding, security is connected more to the state than to its people. While physical security and the security of the state is important, there are at least three major problems associated with an exclusive focus on it:

• An uncritical focus on strengthening state security has historically led to the support of repressive regimes or elites, and even genocide or massacre.
• A narrow focus on physical security overlooks the broader range of insecurities experienced by people in their everyday lives, including economic, health-related, and environmental insecurity.
• A physical security-based perspective promotes the development of police as a force trained in military tactics, rather than a service with a responsibility to protect the broader rights and interests of local populations.

 
For Community-Oriented Policing to be effective, we must expand our understanding of security and insecurity.  A Human Security perspective, which considers the interconnectedness of the many types of insecurities, is useful in this regard. 

• Trust

  In addition to instilling a sense of security, the police in post-conflict settings are faced with the challenge of increasing trust between themselves and local communities. The existence of prevalent security threats may trigger the police (and the state in general) to adopt heavy-handed strategies that bringing about fear and resentment towards the police at local levels, rather than instilling long-term security. This is referred to as the security-trust challenge. Read more.

  Criminologists Dirikx, Gelders and Parmentier (2012) distinguish between two types of trust that communities may have towards their police forces: trust in police effectiveness, and trust in police fairness.

  • Trust in police effectiveness: police are trusted based upon their ability to control crime. Are neighbourhoods safe? Are crime rates low? (This is also referred to as the performance-based perspective).
  • Trust in police fairness: police are trusted by fairness within their operations. Do they provide services to all communities regardless of background? (This is specifically known as the distributive justice perspective). Do they demonstrate fairness in how authority is exercised, and decisions are made? (Specifically known as the procedural justice perspective)

  Community Oriented Policing (COP) initiatives that deliberately focus on building mutual trust between local communities and the police hold promise in dealing with the security-trust challenge. ICT4COP research has shown that factors characterizing a trust-based relationship will vary from one context to another. Read more about context sensitivity.

  Local COP initiatives need to be based on an in-depth understanding of the history of conflict and abuse at the hands of the police – including the ways in which this has shaped current state/police-citizen relationships. Everyone engaged in promoting COP, should learn about the “mechanisms” in society that actually build trust at local levels.

  For example, in Afghanistan COP efforts building on existing local initiatives such as the chowkidari (watchmen) and the shura system represent useful ways to strengthen trust-based community-police relationships. Moreover, collaboration with local civil society actors that are familiar with local communities and their concerns may represent important allies in nurturing and demonstrating trust at local levels, and help to strengthen the relations between the police and local communities. 

  Research also shows that information and communication technologies (ICT) may have a potential to increase trust between police and communities where direct face-to-face interaction currently is lacking. Efforts to build online relationships with the citizens can provide basis for improving offline police community interactions. Similarly, the actions taken by police management against complaints registered through ICT tools could be instrumental in building trust and gaining respect in community. 

• Legitamacy

  Legitimacy is closely related to trust: The police must be seen as legitimate in order to be trusted, and the extent to which a police organization is trusted is often seen to be an indicator of its legitimacy among the community.  However, the two are not always coexistent – a public may regard its police as legitimate without trusting it. It is useful to consider two types of legitimacy: normative legitimacy and empirical legitimacy.

  Normative legitimacy: When authorities act in accordance with formal law in a democratic society, for example in situations where the police is free of corruption.

  Empirical legitimacy: When authorities are perceived to be legitimate, even when they do not comply with certain criteria, or operate in accordance with the formal law. This type of legitimacy is subjective and based upon public perception.

  In police-community relations, it is useful to understand policy legitimacy from the viewpoint of citizens, looking at citizens’ perceptions of fairness in policing and the impact this has on citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police.

  In post-conflict settings, non-state institutions may be granted more legitimacy than the police. These institutions may be based upon local traditions or customs, where people view traditional or customary authorities as legitimate, either out of habit or precedent.  The legitimacy of these institutions often arises from a shared perception that their members have the knowledge, ability, or moral capacity necessary to fulfill the institution’s tasks and responsibilities. More information.

  Examples of non-state institutions with high levels of legitimacy among the local populations can be seen in the indigenous cantones of Guatemala and the jirgas of Pakistan. Learn more about these institutions from the following digital stories:

  The Role of Indigenous Institutions in Guatemala (Guatemala) - Narrated by Arturo Matute

  Dispute Resolution Councils in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (Pakistan) - Narrated by Shakir Ullah

  Legitimacy may also stem from other factors related to specific local moralities or sympathies for a specific struggle or cause, as is the case of resistance movement or Jihadist groups. Finally, legitimacy may be granted upon territorial control, resource control, or the ability or willingness to use violence. Initiatives that promote COP, and police reform programs more in general, must take these local conditions into consideration.

• Accountability

  Accountability can be understood as answerability – as having the obligation to answer questions regarding one’s decisions and actions. We need to consider “who do the police answer to?” and “who is the police loyal to”? It is common to distinguish between two types of accountability – upwards accountability and downwards accountability:

  • Upwards accountability: answerability within a police organization upwards, towards an officer’s superiors.
  • Downwards accountability: answerability downwards, towards the community or public

   
  Across sectors, it has proven generally easier for organizations and institutions to demonstrate upwards accountability rather than downward accountability. Police accountability towards the public is indeed key for building trust and ensuring reciprocal partnerships and is thus critical for a meaningful COP practice. 

  Police accountability has achieved much attention in relation to the global police demonstrations in 2020. In the media, the focus of discussions has been on the accountability of police conduct, although accountability includes many more aspects of policing. The police must account for its actions and effects towards a variety of actors and with respect to a diversity of objectives.

  While all these actors put a lot of pressure on officers, authoritarian states institutions may suppress civil society actors that are trying to make police accountable, and further undermining downward accountability.