Community Safety Policies in Sweden. A Policy Change in Crime Control Strategies?

Abstract

Internationally, there has been a general trend towards crime prevention and community safety measures. The main policy ideas and instruments associated with this trend have spread widely in Western countries. This article examines the Swedish national crime prevention policy. As Sweden is a welfare society with a long tradition of social crime prevention, it is of great interest to explore to what extent the aforementioned trend has influenced its crime prevention policy. We do this by examining Sweden's national policy and how its concepts have spread to the local level—specifically, to municipalities and their local crime prevention councils. We find that there has been a preventive shift in Sweden, although not as far-reaching as in many other European countries. Substantial changes have occurred in the understanding and direction of crime prevention work, and the question is to what extent this development will continue.

Keywords:

• crime prevention
• community safety
• preventive turn
• policy convergence
• Sweden

Notes

¹There is no established Swedish translation of “community safety.” “public safety,” “citizen safety,” “safety,” and “local crime prevention work” are the most common related terms used in public documents. Our study focuses on the content, meaning, and direction of Swedish crime prevention work, which implies that it is the usage and meaning of the concept and not the chosen terminology that is of interest. This does not mean that the words used are without significance, as conceptual usage is an important part of a policy discourse. What it does mean is that the term “community safety” was not used as such in the empirical analysis.

²There are two main approaches to crime prevention (Tilley, 2009). Social crime prevention emphasizes reducing the number of offenders and the motivation to offend. Related measures are directed towards the social causes of crime, often by changing social conditions and social environments. Situational crime prevention emphasizes reducing criminal opportunities rather than addressing the characteristics of criminals or potential criminals. This strategy attempts to increase the risks and difficulties associated with crime and to reduce the rewards of crime.

³There are 290 municipalities in Sweden, and the largest cities include several sub-municipal councils (e.g., Stockholm 14, Gothenburg 15, and Malmö 8). This means that 256 municipalities have local crime prevention councils (www.bra.se).

⁴More than half the speakers were from the National Crime Prevention Council, the police, or universities. About one third were from municipalities (e.g., local politicians and civil servants, representatives of local crime prevention councils) and the remainder were NGO representatives, national politicians, and representatives from business and trade.