Intervención Salvador Berdún en Radicalisation and its influence on the securitisation of European prison systems
Radicalisation and its influence on the securitisation of European prison systems. National security and jihadist terrorism.
- In Event: Interdisciplinary approaches to radicalization, political violence and the relations between terrorism and crime to advance P/CVE
Thu, September 12, 8:00 to 9:15am, Faculty of Law, University of Bucharest, Floor: Basement, Constantin Dissescu Room (0.01)
Abstract
Prison systems have become part of national security and defence strategies. As a result, some European prison laws have included reference to public security and even national security when establishing more restrictive prison regimes. This process had already been anticipated in the seventies of the twentieth century when it faced the problems generated in prisons by nation-style terrorist groups.
Security strategies have come to consider radical, non-democratic ideologies as risk enhancers. These ideologies are seen as possible sources of propagation of violent ideas and actions. Alonso Pascual (2013, pp. 231-234) points to the risk posed by extremist ideologies to national security, which implies an expansion of this concept. At the same time, this broadening of the concept of national security has been anticipating the State’s response to the prevention and criminalization of behaviors that are often far from being true criminal conduct from a criminological perspective. As Cano Paños and Castro Toledo (2018, pp. 32-36) explain, there is a profound discrepancy between the criminological assessment and that made by the courts when judging the processes of Islamic radicalization.
These preventive practices have been implemented in all sectors of institutional action, from social policies to criminal and penitentiary policies. Prison systems are now just another instrument of national security. This has led to the creation of a new category of risk that is considered dangerous to general safety and to which a sui generis statute applies, which entails the standardization of a series of control measures based on the safety of the public.
As a result, at-risk individuals are often subjected to increasingly restrictive prison regimes. The indeterminacy of the concepts and the subjectivity in the application of risk assessment criteria make it necessary to reflect deeply on the rationality of these practices that have been embodied in European legislation.
Author
- Salvador Berdún, ACAIP Center of Studies of the Administration of penitentiary instittutions