Crime under Lockdown: The Impact of COVID-19 on Citizen Security in the City of Buenos Aires

This paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown on criminal activity in the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. We find a large, significant, robust, and immediate decline in crime following quarantine restrictions. We observe the effect on property crime reported to official agencies, police arrests, and crime reported in victimization surveys, but not in homicides. The decrease in criminal activity was greater in business and transportation areas, but still large in commercial and residential areas (including informal settlements). After the sharp and immediate fall, crime recovered but, as of November 2020, it did not reach its initial levels. The arrest data additionally allow us to measure the distance from the detainees address to the crime location. Crime became more local as mobility was restricted.

Sistema de información geográfica para el registro de actos delictivos como soporte de las comisarías usando el API de ArcGis

Citizen insecurity is one of the biggest problems in the world, in search of a solution to address this problem, we found that a GIS is a tool worth evaluating for a possible solution. As an objective of this study, we seek to evaluate the feasibility of using a GIS to record criminal acts supported by police stations, for the development of this project we propose SCRUM as a development framework and for the methodology of data collection we will take articles, theses, newspapers and external statistics. Throughout some research, we will be able to make different comparisons about elements for our software, this goes from the effectiveness of using it to improve citizen security, the different perspectives that similar software can take (real time population, time period population, state entities), to the best way to get a better cost benefit for the development by evaluating the differences between the software. Finally, we were able to conclude that there is a high degree of effectiveness on the part of the GIS, in addition to the fact that it makes possible new methods of prevention for the improvement of citizen security.

Smart Home Powered by Social Network for Citizen Security

Nowadays, the Internet of Things is used to transfer information from human to human and from human to machine. In this paper, we propose the use of IoT platforms to link those homes that are equipped with IoT capabilities, in order to increase security and prevent from a crime to a fire, and even monitor health status of a person. Using a microcontroller, it is possible to send information to a cloud server capable of sharing this information with other households connected to the platform, as well as allowing linking this data to one of the most used social networks in the world: Facebook. Linking smart homes with social network, allows to consult the status of sensors and IoT devices empowering citizen security against crime, violence and events that could put the integrity of people at risk both in their property and their health. The study is carried out for a particular region of Latin America, given its high rates of violence against citizens that have occurred in recent years.

Technological trends

Introduction: This bibliographic review article is the product of research on new technological trends, focusing on citizen security, carried out at the SIEL research hotbed of the Universidad del Valle-Buga headquarters, Colombia in 2019. Problem: Investigate the new technological trends aimed at the citizen security sector. Objective: Identify the new technological trends in the sector of citizen security, its application in the world and expose the current state in Colombia. Methodology: Documentary review of primary sources of the last 5 years, such as; scientific articles, government pages, laws, press releases and recognized newspapers. Results: Since MinTIC was created in Colombia, in partnership with different government entities, society in general has benefited from projects in areas such as education, health, housing and security. The modernization of control institutions in Colombia is evident being the security sector one of the most advantageous. Conclusion: In general terms, sectors such as technology and education are still lagging behind. As for the security sector, there is no doubt the effort and progress in research and development of new technologies present in the vast majority of government entities. Originality: new technological trends are investigated from the point of view of citizen security in several application scenarios. Limitations: For the most part, the review focuses on aspects of citizen security, indicating very little the social field

The Relation Among Regional Organisations, the Consolidation of Democracy and Citizen Security: The Cases of SICA and UNASUR

Latin American regional organisations (ROs) have been active in the area of citizen security for at least a twenty year-period. An important relationship between citizen security and the democratic consolidation of ROs’ official documents in the Latin American region has been unexplored. This leads us to the main question of this paper: ‘What has been the role of ROs with a formalized level of citizen security cooperation in the democratic consolidation?’ To answer this question, this research was based on two case studies: The Central American Integration System (SICA) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) between 2008 and 2018, the period during which both organizations acted in the area of citizen security. The methodology used in this research was process tracing and comparative process tracing. Its results indicate that organisations developed a vision of how cooperative actions in citizen security can promote the consolidation of democracy by strengthening the rule of law. However, actors are sceptical of the ability of ROs to succeed, given the lack of political interest and the deficit of resources, that are major barriers for them to achieve great success in the citizen security field and, consequently, in the consolidation of democracy. The conclusion is that the analysed ROs produce a lot in terms of documents, but do little in achieving their ambitions, hence constituting, in and of themselves, a reflection of the flaws of the Latin American regionalism.