Policing and the Feeling of Safety: the Rise (and Fall?) of Community Policing in the Nordic Countries

A major trend in the Nordic countries is the increasing focus on citizens' perceptions of safety, the enhancement of which is seen as a task for the police. One way to accomplish this has been the introduction of proximity policing. Existing research on the subject from all the Nordic countries is evaluated, with special focus on a comprehensive evaluation of a Danish experiment. The evaluations demonstrate that the concept of proximity policing has had limited success, and it has been abandoned in Finland and Norway. The article concludes by offering some explanations for the lack of success, among these the high level of perceived safety already present in the Nordic countries, the lack of causal relation between police visibility and citizens' perception of safety, and the lack of tradition for citizen involvement in the Nordic welfare states.     

Effects of Drug Treatment Units in Swedish Prisons

This article presents the findings from an evaluation of the care provided at treatment units for drug abusers in Swedish prisons. A total of 741 inmates who were placed in prison treatment units in 2006 are compared with individuals with whom they were matched on the basis of their statistical risk for reoffending, and who served prison terms during the years 2001–2002. Half of the inmates in the treatment group were placed in units working with a 12-step programme, while the remainder were placed in treatment units employing cognitive programmes. The study shows positive results with respect to reoffending. The greatest differences were found in the following subgroups: males, inmates who were at least 30 years of age, those who completed their stay in a treatment unit, and those who had spent at least 4.5 months in a treatment unit.     

Discretionary Leniency and Typological Guilt: Results from a Danish Study of Police Discretion

Results from a qualitative study of police discretion in Denmark are presented. The aim of the study was to investigate the background for police decisions made on the spot, and to determine whether or not police discretion amounts to discrimination. Police discretion is analysed as two distinct forms of power, namely the power of definition/suspicion and the power of procedure/prosecution. The study shows that both forms are used in a discriminatory way, and it is argued that use of the power of suspicion results in discrimination. The power of prosecution, on the other hand, need not necessarily entail discrimination, but in practice it often does. The police discern between ?typical offenders' and ?decent citizens' and treat suspects differently according to type. The reason for this discrimination, it is argued, can be found in officers' notions of typological guilt , a form of ? alleged ? guilt that is independent of concrete evidence. Differences in the degree of leniency experienced by different types of suspect can be interpreted as vicarious punishment of the typologically guilty. The impact of this kind of police practice on police?citizen relations, and possibilities for improvement, are discussed.     

Political Representation in Sweden

Using interview data from studies with voters and members of parliament, both in 1968/69 and in 1985, Swedish representational democracy is assessed. The analysis focuses on four linkage processes - social representation. role representation, policy representation and anticipatory representation. The results are compared with Converse and Pierce's from their study of political representation in France. In their analysis they find the French system falling 'short of its potential for much of the electorate much of the time'. Heinz Eulau, in a review article of Converse and Pierce's book. goes one step further, branding the French democracy as elitist and run by unresponsive parties. Looking at the results from the Swedish studies, an Eulaucan conclusion seems a bit drastic, while a verdict of the kind Converse and Pierce delivered for France may be too lenient. Clearly, the Swedish system is far from any model of popular representation run from below. A more elitist model. with an emphasis on policy leadership on the part of the political parties, fits most of our results much better.     

Power in the Swedish Parliament

This article is based on a mail questionnaire sent to members of the Swedish parliament (the Riksdag) in 1988. To increase our understanding of how the institution works, an analysis of members' perceptions of the distribution of power within the Riksdag is undertaken. Members were asked (1) how influential various groups and bodies are, and (2) how influential these groups and bodies should be. The results show that members want more power to be given to parliamentary party groups, committees and MPs as individuals, and less power to the party leaders and the chiefs of staff, Differences in perceptions along partisan lines are small. However, members of the Greens - an anti-establishment party - are more oriented toward strengthening the influence of individual MPs and toward weakening the power of party leaders than are members of the established parties.