ABSTRACT
Crime has always represented a threat to the security of ordinary people in all countries and, occasionally, to state institutions also. The use of legitimate sovereign force to uphold domestic law and order in the name of state and human security is universal and has a long history. In some countries state security has long been as much a domestic political issue as an international one. In Italy during the Cold War, for example, the domestic threat posed by political violence and criminal violence dominated state security policy to much the same extent as the Soviet threat preoccupying the rest of Western Europe. Most pertinent to the consideration of security is the fact that nearly half a million people per year are murdered. As with the economic cost, this figure grew significantly in the 1990s. Two of the states of the Americas in the ‘world homicide top ten’, Colombia and Venezuela, epitomize the security threats posed by crime.
