(cont. from § 8) The National Audit Office's report on the 2015 Police Reform (cont. JuU31)
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
M considers that the Swedish Police Authority has not worked sufficiently effectively to achieve the intentions of the 2015 reform 1 and argues that the government should not govern the number of police stations 1. M emphasizes that the police need peace of work rather than new political maneuvers 1. C considers that the police have become less common in rural areas and that the closure of stations hits resource-poor areas hardest 2. C argues that requiring a police presence throughout the country is a matter of administrative governance 2. V considers that local competence was lost during the reform 3 and that the police must cooperate with the rest of society 3. V proposes a safety index for banks 3. KD argues that the goals of increased flexibility and quality have not been achieved 4. KD considers that centralization has reduced the local presence 4.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Lars Jilmstad (M)
Mr. Speaker! Today we are debating the government's assessment of the Swedish National Audit Office's report Police Reform 2015 – intentions not yet reached. The headline constitutes in itself a poignant summary.
Let me first say that for several reasons, it is a very important audit that the Swedish National Audit Office has conducted. The Swedish Police Authority is one of our largest agencies. Taxpayers provide very large resources and have reason to expect that they are used in a good way regarding both the agency's organization and its results. It is clear that such a far-reaching reform of both organization and forms of operation as the one that took place just over ten years ago needs to be scrutinized properly. The Swedish National Audit Office's overall conclusion is that the Swedish Police Authority has not worked sufficiently effectively to achieve the intentions of the reform and that they have not yet succeeded in this.
Let me remind you that the reorganization of the police force just over ten years ago meant that the 21 county police authorities, the National Forensic Laboratory, and the National Police Board were merged into one authority. Even further back, the police force was more fragmented and organized and equipped at the municipal level, naturally with great differences as a result. The idea of acting as an authority was, among other things, to achieve increased flexibility and improved results. Since the government obviously influences the authority's work, the National Audit Office has also audited the government's proposition.
The Committee views positively that the government's management of the Police Authority focuses on effects. That is, of course, natural. A well-managed police force that has good results and a high crime clearance rate and that gives us all increased safety naturally stands very high on the government's agenda. It is obvious that the reform did not lead to any quick results in that direction. Therefore, it is natural that the government shares the Swedish National Audit Office's assessment that the intentions of the police reform have not been fully achieved, that the operational results still need to be improved, and that the internal management and follow-up within the Police Authority have had deficiencies.
Neither the government nor the committee majority wants to see the political steering of the police's activities that the motions in the matter express. In these motions, it is emphasized, among other things, that they want an announcement regarding a stop to further closures of police stations.
There is reason in this context to remind that police issues were debated in this chamber about two weeks ago. My committee colleague Charlotte Nordström then underlined that the Police Authority now needs peace to work after several years of reforms. She emphasized that the focus for the operations should lie on implementation, perseverance, and results rather than new political maneuvers. What it is about, she said, is to combat serious and organized crime. More need to be prosecuted. The clearance rate, which has admittedly increased significantly for serious crimes, needs to be raised regarding quantity crimes.
Much is going the right way now. Something that is yielding results is, among other things, that the government and the Riksdag have given the police a number of new tools. These new tools and other circumstances lead to a change in the police's way of working. What form this should take is best decided by the Police Authority itself, not by politicians. Parts of the opposition have also been clear on this previously.
The Swedish Parliament's investigation service, RUT, stated in a report in 2005 that 106 police stations had been closed in Sweden since 1994. 78 of the 106 had been closed after the year 2000, thus only within the span of five years. Faced with this, the then Minister for Justice, Thomas Bodström, told Dagens Nyheter that the closures are an effect of the police's changed way of working and that he understands that small stations that are rarely open are merged with larger ones. That is also still the case. The Government shall not direct or set goals for how many police stations should exist in the country. It is an operational responsibility for the Police Authority.
Safety and effective crime fighting do not necessarily depend on physical buildings. However, the local police presence is of course very important. It can be achieved in different ways, for example through area police, mobile police offices, community policing activities, or co-location with other authorities. Not least through changed confidentiality rules, we have now made it possible for social services and the police to work together in an effective way.
It is the Swedish Police Authority that best determines where stations or other types of workplaces should be located. It does so based on the local crime situation, its own resources, and operational needs.
As everyone can observe, the appropriation for the police has increased significantly in recent years, and the investment continues. When we approach the number of police officers in relation to our population that we can collectively see in our European surroundings, we can achieve both a well-functioning police service and a more visible police.
It is, as I said initially, important that the police are scrutinized. There are, admittedly, things to say about the 2015 police reform. This concerns primarily the implementation and the management, and not the basic idea behind the reform itself.
The reform does not need to be reconsidered or redone. Ongoing initiatives, already decided policy signals, and the increased resources to the police mean that the shortcomings that RR points out can be addressed.
Mr. Speaker! The Committee considers, in accordance with the Government, that there are no grounds for any further measures on the basis of the National Audit Office's report. Work is ongoing from both the Government and the police aimed at achieving the intentions of the reform.
I move that the Riksdag adopts the government's communication and that the Riksdag rejects the motion proposals.
Ulrika Liljeberg (C)
Mr. Speaker! We have gathered here to debate the Swedish National Audit Office's review of the Swedish Police Authority's work to achieve the intentions of the 2015 police reform. The overall conclusion from the Swedish National Audit Office is that the Swedish Police Authority has not worked sufficiently effectively to achieve the intentions and that the authority has also not achieved the intentions of the reform.
The reform aimed to provide increased flexibility, improved results, higher quality, and increased cost-effectiveness within the police. Since then, crime has admittedly partially changed, but that does not make it any less urgent that the Police Authority achieves the intentions.
The government and the police say that they are working actively and on a broad front. We could hardly expect anything else. But we can state that it is not enough.
Sweden deserves an effective and well-functioning police authority that both solves and prevents crime. In order for everyone to be able to feel safety and trust, regardless of whether they live in one of our larger cities or in the countryside, the number of police officers needs to be increased and the work improved.
The police reform that was implemented over ten years ago was an important part of this. It is about coordinating resources in the best possible way and jointly preventing and solving more crimes.
In recent decades, however, more and more police stations have been closed, and the police have become an increasingly rare sight in large parts of the country. Around half of all police stations have been closed since the 90s. A great responsibility lies with many governments back in time. It has contributed to a feeling that society is abandoning and betraying the less densely populated parts of the country.
Centerpartiet has pushed for us to see the crimes in the countryside more clearly and for an increased police presence. But further measures are needed to ensure a safe existence throughout the country.
Even though the population density is lower and gang crime is not as intense, we have the violence against children and women, and we have the volume crimes that affect individuals, the tourism industry, trade, and entrepreneurial companies.
When it comes to the quantity crimes, we know that there is a strong connection to organized crime. It is absolutely crucial that the police re-establish presence and availability in an effective manner throughout the entire country.
Mr. Speaker! We in the Centre Party have stood behind the historically large and much-needed increased resources for the Swedish police that are now being realized. In our spring budget, which we submitted recently, we included a redistribution to a police guarantee with a presence in all 290 municipalities in the country.
We agree with what the previous speaker has said. Just as the country's municipalities look very different, the police presence will also need to look different. But the feeling that the police are there when you need them, that feeling needs to be the same throughout the country.
I am sometimes surprised when representatives for the government parties equate the fact that a minister should be able to direct their agencies with ministerial rule. It is not ministerial rule to give a mandate to, in this case, a police authority to increase and ensure a police presence throughout the country so that we can create safety everywhere. We from Centerpartiet consider that it is agency management and not ministerial rule.
But in the Tidö government's Sweden, the police are closing in the countryside. Despite the historically large investments in the police, police reception points in the countryside are being closed. The population in my home county of Dalarna, but also in Blekinge and in other places, has during this mandate period seen how the police have taken down the sign and seen that their opportunity to physically visit the police with fixed opening hours has disappeared.
It is good to have investments in improved service by telephone or digitally. But when it comes to community services such as passports and lost property, reports of many crimes or observations that allow us to increase the clearance and prosecution rates, it is many times completely decisive with a local physical presence in some form.
Being referred to a police reception or similar many miles and many hours away in the countryside also hits those with the weakest resources the hardest. I have said it before, and I say it again. People with disabilities, those who are referred to general communications, those who are not digital or those who have other challenges are always those who are hit hardest by the cuts.
An accessible and present police force that builds trust is crucial for preventing and investigating crimes. An accessible and present police force is crucial for us to restore safety and trust in society.
It is not that I do not appreciate what the government and the police write in the report. But it requires a police authority that increases the pace of its improvement work and a government that is capable of steering and leading the Police Authority in this work, all for a safer Sweden.
Gudrun Nordborg (V)
Mr. Speaker! I vote in favor of the committee's proposal for a decision.
The Swedish Police Authority is an extremely important authority and operation in our country. The task is, of course, to both prevent, deter, detect and resolve criminal activities and other disturbances of public order and security.
The National Audit Office's review results in a recommendation to the government, where the National Audit Office argues that the government must be more focused on the effects of how the police implement the government's priorities and governance. In this governance, the government should avoid an excessively large number of goals and instead focus on the effects.
I believe this is a key to why it has previously been difficult to evaluate police activities in a reasonable way. It has often been about chasing points and comparing apples and pears, many resolved small goals and a few large cases. Here, one must look at the effects in a different way. I think that is actually the main message, both when it comes to how the activities at the police are planned and how they are evaluated.
Of course, there are also earlier reports and other things that can be added to this. The obvious thing with the reform – which many have pointed out both previously and now – was that a part of the local expertise within the police was lost. One lost, for example, the contacts with youth crime, which meant that one could not investigate and curb it in the same way as before. The same applies to violence in close relationships, what we now call men's violence against women. This was moved up centrally, and thus, competencies were sometimes lost along the way.
The internal resource distribution naturally has an additional impact. It has consequences, not least when it comes to the handling of large-scale crime. It is, as has been well known since before, not particularly effective and very difficult. I believe there is reason to note that the police cannot work alone to curb such tasks, but it must also occur in interaction with the rest of society.
This applies in particular when it comes to crime prevention work. Mistakes have been made, I would like to assert, when local police have been used as a kind of resource pool to fill in at other locations when it concerns more serious crime. This has begun to be addressed, and I would like to assert that many other important things are also underway within the Swedish Police Authority.
It is palpable that the police are facing very many new challenges. This is not least about how to tackle digitalization. There, the police must be able to have both capacity and competence so that they can match what is happening out in society. This is in focus as a new area for crime prevention work but also when it comes to the investigative activities.
Even here, it is noted in the National Audit Office's report that both method development and training are needed. Such initiatives also require resources – not just a number of new police officers but additional resources.
Here we must also look at the shared responsibility and what we cause through other political decisions in society. It is about how we, through privatizations within school, healthcare, and elderly care, have opened up opportunities for new forms of crime and infiltrations of criminal activities that have connections to Schengen.
It is serious in itself, but the privatization also means that we are drained of additional tax money because we need administration to monitor these operations. It becomes a bit dramatic and wrong, because this cannot be placed solely on the police.
Many, including myself, argue that it is too easy to start limited companies, which can then make planned bankruptcies and take out risk capital profits. The Economic Crime Authority is a very important part of handling that type of crime.
I would also like to mention the frauds. There, it is interesting – which I have also gained insight into via the oversight councils at the police – that it is not always so easy to cooperate with the banks as we might wish. It is not all banks that can even be reached after four o'clock in the afternoon to, for example, block a suspicious or even obviously illegal transaction.
We can also see that from other sides, pressure has been put on the banks to publicly disclose which frauds they or their customers have been exposed to. We could consider whether we could have a security index, where the banks that have handled these issues best receive a plus and a competitive advantage. That might be just as important as merely comparing interest rates, as is done today. There are therefore other avenues that could facilitate the police in their work.
Another important area is, of course, the recruitment of young people into criminal networks. Here we come back to the fact that one sometimes competes for resources between serious organized crime and ordinary violence, such as men's violence against women and children. But these are connected, both directly and indirectly. There should be no competition; instead, this should be seen as a strong connection.
This is particularly true when it comes to the children and the recruitment of children and young people into crime. Almost everyone, both those who are active within the police and those who are active within the children's rights organizations, say that all these vulnerable young people have experienced violence in the home. Without vulnerable children, we would have no recruitment. Helpers begin to cry at regular intervals when they hear the children's stories.
Here we also have a serious signal. We must act early for children who have experienced violence. It should also be said that the children, especially the boys, learn an aggressive behavior that creates power through the father who hits the mother. This is documented both in research and in evidence, which I can refer to. The boys thus learn to use violence as a means of power.
Now we can also clearly see that it is not only about the boys, but girls can also be attracted by these macho behaviors and themselves begin to practice them. Children are therefore often extra vulnerable both as victims and as perpetrators, and in slightly different ways. The girls are slightly more vulnerable because they can also often be subjected to sexualized violence.
Here we have opportunities to act more strongly and cooperate with the school. We emphasize the importance of reports of concern so that other social institutions will step in and address the crimes against children, while also being able to supplement with social interventions.
It is obvious that we have new challenges via the gaming world. Here, the police should be able to be active both in various clubs, such as the active clubs, and online to intercept risks and begin acting against recruitment in that way. Here, it is primarily the far-right extremism that has made itself known and which, through these paths, spreads its ideologies and recruits in a very dramatic and disgusting way.
I also cannot help but mention the importance of paying attention to the criminal gangs' connection to prostitution, human trafficking, and violence pornography. These are major sources of income for them, and here we have far too little surveillance, largely across the entire country, even though there are some places that focus on these types of activities.
In conclusion, it is important, which the Riksrevisionen's report also highlights, to have both excellence and breadth when it comes to competence. There must be those who are very skilled, but also a broad competence out in the operations so that one truly becomes a learning organization. We need to elevate the quantitative goals for competence and method development and mark how important they are.
Torsten Elofsson (KD)
Mr. Speaker! I would like to begin by expressing my approval of the committee's proposal in the report.
The purpose of the Swedish National Audit Office's review was to investigate whether the intentions of increased flexibility, improved results, higher quality, and increased cost-effectiveness have been achieved following the reorganization in 2015. The Swedish National Audit Office's overall assessment, we can state bluntly, is that those objectives have not been achieved. Although some parts have improved, the Swedish National Audit Office states that deficiencies remain in several areas. The report states, among other things, that the local level has not been strengthened to the extent that was intended, despite the number of police employees having increased.
Mr. Speaker! More than eleven years have now passed since the largest organizational change within the Swedish police since the nationalization in 1965. Already in connection with the nationalization, certain fears were expressed regarding centralization and a lack of police presence at the local level. We can now state that those fears, in that respect, have been realized to some extent.
The nationalization of the police was necessary. However, the development has moved towards an increasingly increased centralization. When I started in the police some time ago, we had 118 police districts, which in 1999 became 21 county police authorities. Now we have a single large national police authority that is divided into seven large regions and a number of national departments.
The change has occurred at the cost of closed police stations, regionalization of communication and command centers, fewer arrest units with longer transports as a result, a centralized reporting intake in the form of the police's contact centers and major changes to the former criminal departments. The result is that the police have distanced themselves from the citizens, who previously many times knew their police, something that the previous speaker also mentioned.
The National Audit Office notes that the national support departments have had the largest percentage growth, namely HR departments and finance departments. Of course, Noa, the national operational department, has also grown. However, the allocated funds have primarily been intended to strengthen the local police areas.
The review shows that the local police areas have not received the reinforcement that the reform aimed for. To some extent, this is explained by high internal mobility – many employees leave the local police areas for other organizational levels slightly higher up – as well as by difficulties in recruiting police officers in certain police regions. Additional contributing factors may be a lack of incentives to remain in outer service for longer periods.
Mr. Speaker! All of this is correct in itself, but I believe one must have a somewhat deeper understanding of and insight into the operational conditions to understand the causal relationships, why it looks the way it does.
One must remember that police activity is largely event-driven, and there are a number of functions and requirements within the police that can never be set aside. Primarily, it concerns what we can call the core activity itself, which, in simplified terms, consists of the investigation and intervention activities. For the latter, it is required that within every police area there is always a certain number of patrols on duty, which is personnel-intensive.
I do not know if everyone has calculated this, but if you are to staff a police car with two officers 24/7, 365 days a year, it takes 18 officers. It is also a function that one cannot cut back on. One must always have a certain level of security, a certain number of police cars in service at all hours of the day, in order to be able to carry out the interventions that are required. That level of security must not be undershot, and this must be kept in mind at all times.
It is the same with the criminal police activity. It also requires a minimum staffing to handle serious crimes, deadlines for those deprived of liberty, urgency requirements regarding young offenders and other high-priority crimes. There must also be an on-call service 24/7.
On top of this, there are other events that one cannot really control, Mr. Speaker. These can be unforeseen events in the form of explosions, demonstrations, high-risk football matches, and other things that draw large resources.
Other things can also, of course, affect attendance. Sick leave, holidays, training, etc. create gaps and staff shortages in the regular staffing, but the requirements still remain. One must have a certain staffing level. It can be particularly tough during the summer months, when staffing is at its lowest and the pressure is often at its highest. This is a challenge and a puzzle for planning within the police. That must be kept in mind, Mr. Speaker.
What is it then that has to take a backseat in such situations? Well, it is the police in the local police areas who have to step in. Put bluntly, local presence and crime prevention activities have to take a backseat so that the intervention and investigation work and all other compelling requirements can be met.
It has been and for many years has been a challenge for the police to manage the local presence with the current organization. It is also a challenge on a personal level for the individual police officer with constant relocations and changes in work tasks. It has not become any easier with the centralization either. One is moved over greater distances and has to be away from home for quite long periods.
It is not enough with a police presence for any hour a week. Good crime prevention work is based on continuity, good knowledge of people and the local area, as well as close cooperation with the municipality, the business community, associations, and residents. For this, a dedicated and secured resource for municipal police work is required, which cannot be claimed for other reinforcement movements. A certain resource must be on site at all times.
Mr. Speaker! The municipalities now have a statutory crime prevention responsibility. The question is whether we should have a police force with a stronger connection to the municipalities. In many other countries, this has been solved with a municipal police. In Sweden, we have tried to solve the shortage with security guards, watchmen and safety wardens, or whatever label we choose to put on them.
I have all respect for the mentioned professions, but it is a solution with major flaws. I consider that the question of, and the demand for, a present police force in municipalities is of such a nature that it should be the subject of a special investigation.
The Swedish National Audit Office seems to be on similar lines of thinking because the current management risks reducing efficiency and limiting local flexibility. The Swedish National Audit Office further assesses the agency's ability to ensure long-term and systematic local work as insufficient.
The National Audit Office also criticizes the police's ability to solve the so-called quantity crimes. They actually constitute 80 percent of the reported crimes. It is everyday crime that comes close to life, personally and in our residential areas, and which has a major impact on our sense of security.
An explanation for why quantity crimes are not being cleared is that the resources at present are largely consumed by the serious violent crime and the organized crime that we have to combat. We have also seen a digitalization of crime, which is challenging for the police. This also has a strong connection to quantity crimes with clear links to gang criminality and organized crime. This applies in particular to fraud and drug offenses.
To combat serious crime, we must therefore also investigate the quantity crimes when the prospects for prosecution are good and ensure that the perpetrators are prosecuted. Not least, it is about catching young people who are entering into criminality. It is, in other words, very important to investigate and prosecute those cases as well.
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.