Henrik Tham

Law and Order as a Leftist Project?: The Case of Sweden

Since the 1970s, crime policy has become politicized. Conservative parties have launched the law and order theme and exploited crime in political campaigns. Social Democratic and other leftist parties have more or less reluctantly followed. Since the 1990s, however, the political left itself seems now to take the lead in the reshaping of crime policy in a less liberal direction. Tendencies towards such a development are clearly discernible in Italy, Germany, the UK and the Scandinavian countries. The article discusses a number of elements of and explanations for the sharpening of Social Democratic crime policy in Sweden: a tendency towards alarmism, the tradition of left realism and the politicization of crime policy, the goal of a drug-free society, the practice of an interventionist policy, the increasing use of symbolic legislation, the demand for zero tolerance and the discipline of the market and the increasing inequality. These elements are finally seen as indicators of problems of integration and consensus characterizing Sweden and the political left at the turn of the century.

Swedish Drug Policy and the Vision of the Good Society

Swedish drug policy has according to official declarations been successful. The picture has recently been challenged through rising drug use and rising drug related mortality. This development has taken place in spite of the restrictive Swedish policy with further penalization of drug consumption, increasing number of police officers working with drug crime and rising number of persons sentenced to prison for drug offences. The question to be explored here is then what strategies the Swedish Government has chosen in the light of the development and how these strategies should be explained. The analysis is based on central Government documents as well as statements from Government ministers, public authorities and voluntary organizations. The picture that emerges is a denial of the failure of the old Swedish model but at the same time an alarmist stand with demands for increases of resources for information, treatment and control. The strategies chosen can be derived from two central themes in Swedish drug debate: ‘a drug‐free society’ and ‘total rehabilitation’. The two in turn seem to be aspects of an underlying vision—the vision of the good and integrative welfare society.

Swedish Drug Policy: A Successful Model?

The shift in Swedish drug policy since around 1980 towards a more strict model has according to the official point of view been successful by comparison with the earlier, more lenient drug policy. However, available systematic indicators show that the prevalence of drug use has increased since around 1980, that the decrease in drug incidence was particularly marked during the 1970s and that some indicators point towards an increase during the 1990s. The shift towards a more strict policy.

Individual Prediction and Crime Trends

A typical solution proposed by both politicians and academics to the problem of crime in society today is individual prediction and early intervention. The question then is how this approach contributes to the central question of how to explain trends in crime. Data used to illustrate this question are drawn mainly from prediction studies, official statistics and level-of-living surveys in Sweden. It is argued that the possibility of predicting or explaining trends in crime by individual data is quite limited. First, the predictive power of individual childhood or teenage properties is too weak to explain total crime or specific types of crime. Second, changes in aggregate measures of conditions during upbringing are not easily compatible with changes in trends in crime. Third, other variables relating to changes in the opportunity structure than changes in the family of upbringing can account for the development of crime trends.

The public sense of justice in Scandinavia : A study of attitudes towards punishments

Crime policy is increasingly legitimized by reference to the public sense of justice. A research project has therefore been conducted in all five Scandinavian countries in order to examine the public’s views on punishment. These views have been examined by means of simple questions in telephone interviews, by vignettes in postal questionnaires, and by focus groups having seen a film of a mock trial. The results show that, when asked simple questions, the public want stiffer sentences. In their assessments of the vignette crimes, the public demands on average lower prison sentences than judges, and this tendency becomes stronger in the focus group study. The propensities towards punitiveness seem to diminish with more information and increasing proximity to the parties involved.

Theft in Sweden 1831?1998

This paper on theft in Sweden analyses crime and reactions to crime in non-individual, structural terms. The data used stems from Swedish convictions statistics which are available for the period since 1831. Swedish trends in theft convictions follow an international pattern with reductions during the second half of the 19th century and settling at a comparatively low level during the decades around the turn of the 20th century. A sharp occurred after the mid-1920s until the mid-1980s. Upon closer examination, this increase took the form of an S-curve whose course resembles that of goods production. One interpretation is that once a basic level of material security had been guaranteed, theft convictions followed the availability of goods; with more to consume, there is more to steal, and levels of control tend to diminish. Howthat ever, this interpretation may not apply to a smaller proportion of convictions ? those which concern persistent offenders. Their development differed in one decisive manner from that of casual offenders ? the steep rise is very sudden and occurred first after the Second World War. An explanation based on the relationship between livelihood, excessive alcohol consumption and theft is put forward.

Punishment in Sweden: A Changing Penal Landscape

Europe has abolished the death penalty. Imprisonment has thereby become the most severe available sanction. The level of, and trends in, imprisonment are also often used as a simple way of describing penal control, although it should be noted that fines have always been the dominant penal sanction in Sweden.

The Influence of the Drug Issue on Criminal Policy

The drug issue has dominated criminal policy in Sweden for decades with an influence on penal legislation, police resources, and prison populations. The question can also be raised if the drug issue has influenced the general criminal policy. An analysis is undertaken of the changes in criminal policy since the 1960s in terms of penal legislation and purpose, means of coercion, interventionist policies, view of offender, the development of prisons, and other fields of change. The parallel development between criminal policy and drug policy is quite clear. It is also argued that the drug policy in various ways seems to have influenced the general development of the criminal policy.

Book Reviews : Nils Christie: Beyond Loneliness and Insti tutions. Communities for Extraordinary People. Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1989

increases in the status of a population’s health can be attributable to higher standards of living then why study the social efficiency of medical health care systems? Having said this, one must ask whether or not the authors could have answered this question in a paragraph or two instead of the twenty-five pages that they devote to the topic. The authors seem to start from the premise that all four of the societies under study are in favor of having the most innovative and effective medical care produced at the lowest cost and available to all as equally