There is no doubt that the concept "trust" dates all the way back to the beginnings of human kind. A sense of unity and trust must be established prior to the grouping of people. Usually there is a lack of trust between people when they are not familiar with each other. This can be dated back all the way to segregated indigenous tribes that fought with the clans surrounding them. Mistrust can be viewed as a survival strategy. Would you be comfortable being surrounded by convicts? I think it's safe to say that most sane people would be quite uneasy. To avoid this sense of danger, society has come up with ways to keep the general public "safe" by locking up and keeping a watchful eye on the dangerous individuals.
However society feels that locking up those who are known criminals isn't enough. The general paranoia has grown resulting in undercover spies and everyone that surrounds you can't be fully trusted. It has grown so out of hand that even married couples often have a prenuptial agreement. People can't even trust the person they've married! Though mistrust may seem as if it has spiraled out of hand, people have a solid reason for it.
Although nobody is truly gaining an upper hand in the situation, at least it helps the public feel as if they are "safe". Rules and regulations are made not just to catch those who commit crimes, but also to prevent some who are tempted to. In the society that we live in, mistrust is unavoidable. With the media that we have, crimes are revealed to the public in a dramatic enough way to scare the masses. Every time something dangerous happens, mistrust rises and people storm out to avoid it from happening again. Once
9/11 occurred there was suddenly a massive rush install better airport security. The same frantic rebuttal happens after every school or public shooting. People simply don't feel safe. Though sometimes mistrust gets out of hand and the measures carried out seem a bit ridiculous, there is always an underlying reason that roots back to survival strategy.
