Territorialización del delito: Aproximación conceptual para el abordaje del fenómeno en la ciudad

Abstract

To analyze the process by which crime has taken hold of its territory in the city as a factor associated with criminality, violence and the perception of security in space, it is necessary to start out with the concept of urban territory, conceived here as a space and a cultural product – the result of the process of ownership carried out by the individuals themselves. To such process there appear physical, linguistic and subjective aspects, condensing times and rites, signs and symbols, providing codes and meanings to the space that account for the reality being transcribed.

If to this we add up the process of taking hold of the territory as a process of making the territory a property and a meaning, it is possible to see signals that condense realities, perceptions and attitudes before the space; they communicate the sense placed there by those inhabiting it. It is, then, the result of social representations, of the acknowledged and socialized, of that which makes reference to social practices of the territory through a non-verbal discourse.

But if these representations generate feelings of insecurity, it is possible to identify the tracks that indicate the presence of a territory inhabited by crime; that is, a space inhabited and occupied by that generated fear, a marginal, deteriorated place, lacking social control and where delinquency takes shape. Fear in the city, then, is a social and cultural construction which, at its semantic level, generates marks and tracks that construct within the imaginary collective scenarios and representations with positive or negative connotations. In this case, a feeling of danger projected into space.