Criminology of Port Security. Management Article Critique

Article Critique: Criminology of Port Security
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Article Critique: Criminology of Port Security
"Port of Call: Criminology of Port Security" is a research article by Yarin Eski highlighting the state of security in and around significant seaports around the world. The report analyzes the different criminological aspects of securitizing ports adopted after 9/11 as a means to achieve international security standards in the ‘hubs of insecurity. To attain the article's objective i.e., to provide an overview of the security status in ports, the author covers different sources and types of dangers associated with ports and further offer a criminology analysis of the efforts asserted to ensure security. The main examples of insecurity expressed in the essay include terrorist attacks, illegal drug trafficking, human trafficking, and pollution. The article further articulates how the efforts to mitigate these insecurities have created a unique status of insecurity through securitization. Generally, the report highlights the associated insecurity aspects of ports and then succinctly analyzes how tackling them (insecurity aspects) leads to a more complicated paradoxical creation of insecurity. This essay seeks to elaborate on how the author presented the ideas to prove his thesis on how internationalization of port regulations has led to a more complicated security situation.
The main argument that the author presents throughout the article is that in the globalized efforts to securitize ports, especially after 9/11, port authorities have created a unique status of paradoxical insecurity through the various methods that they employ to enforce security. According to the author, the internationalization of port security codes has created cohesion between governments, which, unlike popular notion, manages through insecurity instead of managing security. In this regard, presenting before and after assessments of port security prior to the implementation of the international regulations would draw a clearer picture of the port security. Rather, the author focuses on the loopholes available after the standardization which offers a one sided argument. This coverage only detailed the aspects that supported his hypothesis with disregard about what alternative views would implicate on the validity if his stance.
The study’s findings indicate ports present the most threat of transnational insecurities prompting the adoption of internationally applied port regulation measures. These findings support the author’s stance that in the pursuit of ensuring international standards of port security, authorities have created a means to govern them (ports) mainly through managing insecurity instead of providing protection. The continued dangers in ports justify the validity of the findings despite the enforcement of international regulations that have lead to security consumerism when they should entail security management. Instead of dwelling on secondary research derived from literature review alone, the author could have used interviews of port officials to indicate their sentiments on how effective the current system is in fighting the associated crimes. Using different views from the work...