(cont. from § 10) Police matters (cont. JuU10)
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerned police issues and the Swedish Police Authority's activities. Vänsterpartiet (V) argues that the Swedish Police Authority needs a broader and more visionary adaptation to societal developments, including the impact of digitalization on crime 1. V argues that class and gender are central factors behind crime and opposes the government's view that immigration causes violence 1. V wants a police preparation to strengthen capacity and competence 1. Miljöpartiet (MP) argues that the police need more staff to be able to prioritize crime prevention work and investigations 2. MP wants to prioritize civilian employees to relieve police officers 2. MP argues that border controls are signal politics that take resources away from crime fighting 2.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
FÖRSTE VICE TALMANNEN
I would like to welcome our delegation from the Saudi Arabian Shura Council. A warm welcome to the plenary hall of the Parliament here in Sweden! Nice to see you again – we have met earlier today. Please enjoy the debate and the atmosphere!
Gudrun Nordborg (V)
Mr. Speaker! Excuse me for speaking Swedish! Nice to have guests here. Welcome!
As a Left Party member, I stand behind all our reservations, but I choose to move for approval of reservation number 4 regarding police preparation and strategic work.
The reorganization into a unified police authority in 2015 is one of the most extensive changes that has been implemented within the state. The reform was important, but at the same time, we must acknowledge that the results have not met expectations. New challenges have also arisen. Evaluations show a continued need to strengthen strategic planning, governance, and operational development, as well as a need to develop follow-up and strengthen local police work.
Vänsterpartiet therefore argues that a broad and visionary approach to the Police Authority's activities is needed. Both the organization and the forms of its activities need to be adapted to societal developments and the challenges that follow from these, for example when it concerns the impact of digitalization on crime and the possibilities of information technology in crime fighting.
The partly entirely traditional forms of violence, such as men's violence against men and men's violence against women and children, have been reinforced with, among other things, new forms of cruel sexual exploitations. To this is added the narcotics market, gang crime, and extensive fraud directed particularly against elderly people and companies as well as against our welfare systems, to mention a few of many very serious challenges.
Society has become more complex. The police's work must change in character in relation to this. Support for new knowledge was needed regarding both police methods as well as organization and governance.
I therefore move that the government appoints a police commission. Its purpose would be to review and strengthen the Police Authority's operations in terms of both capacity and competence so that the authority can, in the long term, handle the complex and varying developments.
The social development we have seen has resulted in widened class divides that are challenging. The development since the 1990s has involved social planning that has created segregating housing forms. We have made political decisions in our country regarding deregulation and the sell-off of public activities combined with an over-reliance on market solutions, which has moved employment opportunities from rural areas and suburbs to urban centers and large communities.
The Swedish welfare state is cracking while the already well-off are becoming ever wealthier. Inequality provokes. Poor socioeconomic conditions create an increased risk for, among other things, gang crime and violence. Other crimes presuppose that the perpetrator has a reasonably good economy, so-called white-collar crimes. The police must function as one of several active barriers to combat both parts.
As a Left Party member and therefore a feminist, I argue that class and gender are central background factors to crime. The majority of perpetrators are men, regardless of the type of crime. But the dominance is particularly clear in violent crimes. In the really serious violence, which is triggered by the gangs, it concerns men or even small boys from the lower socioeconomic strata. Men's violence directed towards women and children, on the other hand, is independent of class and exists within all social groups.
The best of societies are characterized by equality and equity. Thus, I once again turn against the dominant opinion among the government parties, led by the Sverigedemokraterna, that the development of crime and violence would not, at least, be a result of a large immigration to Sweden.
I mean that we must follow up on the deadly violence that exists both within the gangs and within the family. There, it is often the men who perpetrate the violence against women and sometimes also against children.
We must also focus on other deaths that are increasing in Sweden, namely at our workplaces. The work against workplace environment crimes needs to be strengthened to improve the opportunities for both the police and prosecutors to investigate the crimes. More resources should be allocated. More staff should also be employed who investigate and work specifically and specialized against workplace environment crimes.
I also want to focus a bit on how we formulate the legal text regarding what the police are to do. Among the police's duties in 2 § of the Police Act, the maintenance of safety is not mentioned. On the other hand, it is mentioned, among other things, that the police shall monitor order and security and intervene when disturbances have occurred. That is obviously important. But the police should also be given better tools to work more towards creating security and safety.
A way to mark this would be to make the police's crime prevention mission clear in the Police Act. It would increase the possibilities for cooperation for those who can to an even greater extent be involved in preventing recruitment into new crime, regardless of whether it concerns gang violence or violence in close relationships and violence against women.
Preschool and school need to work with macho ideals and that male and female are associated with reasonable positions in our society. The social services also need to intervene. Then one could detect and address such things that risk going wrong early, perhaps within just a few years for these young people.
I would also like to focus on the fact that we all too often talk about the number of police officers on duty within the Swedish Police Authority. It is naturally important that we have well-trained ones and that there are enough of them. That is not the case yet. But there is an imbalance in how we view those who can contribute in a decisive way within the Swedish Police Authority. This concerns the positions of civil servants and how many of them we employ. One must also avoid creating divisions between police-trained personnel and civil servants.
More civilian employees could relieve the police of many administrative tasks. That is one thing. But it could also be about something that could be decisive: that civilian employees with specialist expertise can strengthen and improve the purely investigative work in a decisive way. It has begun, but it needs to continue.
Before I conclude, I want to mention that the police have once again begun to focus on having victim competence and special measures for crime victims who are considered particularly vulnerable. This includes, among others, women and children who have been subjected to violence from men in various forms. It is extremely important that that work continues.
With good contact with crime victims and complainants, the police's work with evidence collection is facilitated in a decisive way. But the police must meet these crime victims with great respect and highlight what should not be the crime victims' responsibility and themselves carry out documenting efforts, for example when it concerns the home, which can be a crime scene. There, one can film, and one can film the original interrogations with both the perpetrator and the victim. It is extremely important in order to be able to increase the clearance rate. One must also, of course, document injuries to both the crime victim and the suspected perpetrator.
One could also speak at length here, which I will not do, about what we have learned from trying to combat gang crime. There are several laudable projects regarding how firearms are handled. These include, among others, the fas-model and Sluta skjut, which others have mentioned earlier. What I want to focus further on, and what I have mentioned from the rostrum earlier, is that many children unfortunately learn about violence as a means of power in the home if they see their father use violence, and they risk following in the same cruel footsteps.
With approval of reservation 4, I hope that we will be able to pass a better development for a more equal and egalitarian Sweden.
Malte Roos (MP)
Mr. Speaker! It is an important debate we have here today. The police profession is one of society's most important professions. It is a foundation for a just and safe society where everyone's rights are protected and our democratically decided laws are upheld. Our responsibility as members of Parliament is therefore to ensure that the police officers who work out in the field with intervention activities, crime prevention work, and investigations are given the right conditions to do their incredibly important job. Unfortunately, they are not getting them today.
At the same time as there are fewer Swedes in total who are subjected to crime, the serious crime in Sweden has become more visible and tangible, not least the organized crime and the serious violence. This has resulted in far too many crimes being deprioritized. Investigations are put on hold, and the preventive work is sidelined because the police simply do not have enough employees to fulfill their mission. If the police are to be able to solve more crimes and build up their trust among the citizens, the Police Authority needs more staff.
Local crime prevention work is particularly close to my heart and the Environment Party's. If the recruitment of gangs is to be choked off and crime reduced in the long term, poverty and social exclusion must be fought at least as hard as those who commit crimes. Large-scale investments in area development, schools, safety systems, and labor market measures are needed.
But to keep us focused on the police's role, it is inevitable that for their part in the crime prevention work to function, many more area police officers are required who have the right conditions and the right tools to work on crime prevention in close cooperation with their respective local communities, build trust, build relationships, and act in a boundary-setting manner.
During the Green Party's time in government, we significantly increased the number of places at the Police Academy, and we allocated more resources than in decades to hire more police officers. Unfortunately, we see today that it is still difficult to fill the training places, and even though more people are training to become police officers today than ten years ago, the development is far too slow. It is simply not enough to say that more police officers should be hired when there are not enough to hire. More measures need to be put in place.
An all too large part of the police's resources is today in central functions and an all too small part out in the police areas. There are also police officers who are area officers and work in a crime-preventive or repressive capacity who sit in receptions or at the police's contact centers due to a lack of money and colleagues. A rethink needs to be made here. The police's competence should be used in a sensible way, and tasks that can be performed by civilian administrators should not need to be placed on police-trained personnel.
In addition to more police-trained employees, the role, status, and working conditions of the civilian investigators and administrators within the Police Authority need to be prioritized. We in Miljöpartiet therefore want to see a continuous, targeted investment in the civilian staff. In this way, police officers can devote themselves to police work. Better conditions are also created for the Police Authority to build up specific expertise that is currently lacking, for example, hate crime investigators and specialists who drive the authority's development work against hate crimes in cooperation with organizations that represent the particularly vulnerable groups. The Police Authority's recruitment must be needs-based, not based on numerical targets, and right now the need for more civilian employees is obvious.
Mr. Speaker! Something that the police and all relevant authorities must prioritize is the fight against the sexual exploitation of children. For several years, sharp criticism has been directed in internal and external reports at how the Police Authority handles investigations of sexual offenses, but despite this, sufficiently large measures are not being taken to truly resolve the problems.
The Riksdag has directed several motions to the government on this issue, but one aspect that has not been sufficiently addressed in them is the work against commercial sexual exploitation of children and how the police's outreach work can be improved. Miljöpartiet therefore wants the Swedish Police Authority to be tasked with developing a methodological support for its outreach work and broadening the outreach work to include more digital platforms. I strongly urge the other parties to get behind this.
Mr. Speaker! As a resident of Malmö, it is impossible for me to participate in this debate without highlighting the catastrophe that is the border controls between Sweden and Denmark. About a week and a half ago, the Danish government announced that Denmark would abolish its border controls against Sweden on May 12. It was a wise decision and a step back towards the normal, open situation that should apply along our southern border. Unfortunately, the Swedish right-wing government announced as recently as this week that they are extending the Swedish border controls against Denmark from the same date, May 12.
The border controls harm Sweden. They tear apart the Scania-Danish labor market by making commuting more difficult and delayed, they reduce border tourism, and they oppose the very foundation of Nordic and European cooperation, which is the free movement.
Since the border controls were introduced, they have been repeatedly extended with new, creative arguments for why they are needed. In the beginning, it was to manage refugee flows, then to counter gang crime, and most recently it was about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But the truth is, Mr. Speaker, that the border controls are only being extended to signal a self-appointed tough immigration and crime policy to the voters.
The border controls do not make us safer but only take resources from authorities that could have used them for actual crime fighting. It is clear that we have a government that prioritizes signal politics towards its own voters over what is best for Skåne and for Sweden. I therefore want to urge the government parties to listen to their own motto: Look at Denmark! Think about it, and abolish the border controls now!
Mr. Speaker! Miljöpartiet will continue to work for an effective and strong police authority and a justice policy built on research and proven experience rather than signal and symbol proposals.
I support all of the Green Party's motions and reservations in this area and move for the approval of reservation 29 and 45.
In this speech, Emma Berginger (MP) agreed.
The deliberation was hereby concluded.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.