In the frame of the ongoing IRSES Marie Curie Staff Exchange “Reducing Boundaries” – Latitude (BE), IUAV Venice (IT) and UNILASALLE Canoas (BR) – Latitude and Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) invited professors of the Master Course of Law and Society of the Faculty of Law and Criminology of UNILASALLE to speak about “Law and urbanism in southern Brazil: studies on the culture of fear and victimization processes”.

Tomorrow, January 14 from at 12 am (campus La Plaine, building F, 4th floor) Prof. Dr. Renata Almeida da Costa (Lawyer and Professor of “Criminalization, Culture and Urbanization”), Prof. Dr. Cristiane Catarina Fagundes de Oliveira (Attorney of the City Hall of Porto Alegre) and Prof. Dr. Marcos Catalán will discuss the production of the social sense of (in)security and the impact on political and administrative decisions.

Recurrent terms such as “violence” and “victimization” tend to be present in people’s daily life in large urban centers influencing the social perception of (in)security. In that sense, the progressive fencing of urban spaces, the use of private security devices and the production of more Criminal Law are the contemporary strategies to face fear. Therefore, a critical observation of criminal statistical data of large cities (like Canoas, in Southern Brazil) is needed, seeking a dialogical analysis of the sense of insecurity with respect to the contemporary society and the adoption (or not) of compensatory public policies to production fear.