Preventative security as a mode of government. The case of Madrid

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the influence of neoliberal criminological doctrines on the discourses and practices of police management in Madrid. We shall examine in depth what we consider to be the pillars of this security policy: first, the economic procedure that forces a cost and benefit assessment; second, the logic of differentiation of subjects and spaces; third, the relevance given to technical tools to approach both objective and subjective insecurity, and last, the concept of "prevention", which is transverse to all the previous ones, and tries to break away from a repressive approach and manage efficiently any risk of disordering the social order. This analysis is the basis of our thesis: through banal prevention of (in)security a distributed form of governance is implemented over the social.