Urban surveillance and crime governance in Bogotá

This paper analyses how recent changes on crime governance strategies in Bogotá have carried a modification on how surveillance is put into practice in the city. We argue that the reduction of the violence linked to the armed conflict along with the implementation of transnational forms of governing security led surveillance practices to be focused on public spaces instead of individuals. For public spaces to be surveilled, a classification between secure and insecure spaces has been created, which rests upon an esthetic ideal of how those spaces (should) look like. This shift from biographical surveillance to geographical surveillance implies that individuals stop being the main target of classification and control. In their stead, public space is the main object of surveillance. Yet, the fact that individuals are not the core of this governance technology does not mean that they do not experience the consequences of it. The meanings that are arranged around the esthetics of public spaces indorse practices of self-surveillance in which citizens should watch over the city, and protect themselves from crime. •The concern to reduce crime rates has shaped a form of surveillance that is structured on the theatricalization of public spaces.•Biographical surveillance was replaced by a technology of geographical surveillance.•The line between those who watch and those who are watched in public spaces blurs, and gives rise to a new type of individual.•Social control techniques less visible than biographical surveillance and the punitive system are created.•Individuals stop being the main target of surveillance. Instead, public space is the main object.