The Role of Security in Social Well-Being

Abstract

The paper focuses on security as a highly valued political good whose provision is being one of the basic functions of the state realized internally through a functional approach to rights. It explores various phenomena that affect society and the overall quality of social life in the context of the traditional understanding of human rights in a democratic society, and how the fight against organized crime jeopardizes human rights. The current trend in combating organized crime is manifested in a narrow spectrum of repressive responses to security threats, shifting the policy of combating organized crime beyond the framework of social well-being as a concept that guides social organization. The consequence of implementing such a policy against organized crime is intensified victimization. This paper aims to consider the proportionality of responses to threats from organized crime in the context of the infringement of human rights due to the use of repressive measures. Also, in the second part of the paper, the authors want to emphasize that a functional approach to ensuring security, as a value that enables the sustainability and development of the community, implies an integrative approach, i.e., the need to involve women as actors in the security system because a security strategy without an integrative approach deprives society of its overall attributes, negatively impacting its resilience and diminishing it. The authors problematize the dysfunctionality of institutions, which results in the creation of market foundations for organized crime. Where the state effectively offers services that organized crime provides in weak states (debt collection, protection from violence and extortion, effective transactions in money and goods etc.), the space for the market placement of 'products' of organized crime is significantly narrowed. Considering the proportion of repressive and non-repressive proactive action against organized crime, in the second part of the paper, the authors assess the realistic scope of favorable consequences that such a combined policy of combating organized crime would produce in the sphere of the composite corpus of human and civil rights affected through the categories and institutions of the democratic political system.