The National Audit Office's report on the 2015 Police Reform

Mats Hellhoff (SD)

Mr. Speaker! I would like to begin by expressing my approval of the committee's proposed decision.

The National Audit Office's report on the 2015 police reform contains a number of observations and criticisms that are easy to agree with.

Firstly, the local level has not been strengthened in the way that was intended. Secondly, the results in general have not improved, despite significantly increased resources. Thirdly, the internal governance has been unclear and poorly anchored and lacked a holistic perspective.

The first two points are also easy for an outside observer to see. The police are more or less invisible in many places, and publicly reported results have not improved.

But for the third point, we must turn to the report to get an explanation. There, it is pointed out, among other things, that the desire to be faithful to the reform led to hierarchical and geographical boundaries becoming important. The management model created silos with top-down management that was not coordinated and, in some cases, even contradictory.

Mr. Speaker! The 2015 police reform, when 21 county police authorities, the National Forensic Laboratory, and the National Police Board were merged into one authority, is the second major reform of the police that I have had the dubious pleasure of enduring. The first was the so-called local police reform, which was implemented in the mid-1990s.

The suffering was not caused by the reforms themselves but by the advertisement-like flow of information, almost propaganda, which preceded the reforms, especially the police reform, and which was directed at a staff that in many cases was hesitant and in other cases strongly critical.

That hesitant and critical employees experienced that they were not being listened to has certainly been a contributing cause to the implementation not having gone as frictionlessly as one would wish.

Had the Swedish National Audit Office written a report on the local police reform after ten years, that report would probably have contained similar criticism as the one we can see now, for in that case either it did not turn out as intended.

Mr. Speaker! Why did it not turn out as intended? That two reforms, which had been planned and prepared for many years before they were launched, nevertheless have not achieved their objectives gives reason for some reflection. There is an error somewhere here. But what is it that is wrong, and why did it arise?

In the case of the local police reform, the event-driven activities were deprioritized in favor of the local policing, which was supposed to work in a problem-oriented manner. This created a resource shortage in the event-driven activities. Resources had to be taken from the local policing, which therefore could not fulfill the mission that was the reform's core idea. It sounds like an organizational variant of Ebberöd's bank.

With the 2015 police reform, the increased police resources have gone inward and upward in the organization instead of, as was intended, strengthening the local level. This has caused a resource shortage at the local level, and it has not been able to be replaced.

Both of these reforms were planned for several years before they could be implemented. The implementation itself has then taken a number of years, and that is one of the errors. The world changes, and when the reform is completed, it turns out that it did not turn out as intended in all parts. This is because it is simply not possible to fully foresee how things will change, not even in a relatively near future. But it is in the nature of the matter to be reluctant to change one's plans early on. And as the National Audit Office points out, one also wanted to remain faithful to the reform within the agency.

Another error is that it does not seem to have been taken into account for the staffing needs. Perhaps it was not realized what it would look like. Perhaps it was not possible to foresee. Perhaps it was hoped that we in here would decide on resources so that the intentions of the reform could be fulfilled.

I want to assert that we have done very much in that direction. But it remains for the Police Authority to continue forward, steer the operations flexibly and allocate resources so that the public's expectations of high local presence and visibility can be met.

Mr. Speaker! One can, of course, be critical of the 2015 reform. I know many who are, and it naturally has its shortcomings. Some of them are scrutinized in the Swedish National Audit Office's report. But I am convinced that without the 2015 police reform, we would not have the success against organized crime that we have today.

(Applause)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Petter Löberg (S)

Mr. Speaker! Thanks to Mats for his substantive contribution! It is wonderful to hear a Sweden Democrat who does not talk about mass immigration.

Initially, I would like to move for approval of reservation 1 from the Social Democrats.

When the police reform was implemented in 2015, the ambition was incredibly clear. It was a clearly pointing hand from politics. We were to get a unified, efficient and present police force. The old county police authorities were to be merged into a national authority in the same way as the Prison and Probation Service. The governance was to be kept together and the capacity strengthened, while simultaneously coming closer to the citizens.

The ambitions were thus high, not least when it came to the local presence. It was very clear that it was a promise from politics. The police were to come closer to people and know their areas. The police were to work more on crime prevention and meet everyday crime in a more effective and everyday-oriented way with increased local knowledge.

Now the Swedish National Audit Office has audited this. How has it turned out? Unfortunately, it has been possible to demonstrate that the intentions in these respects have not been achieved. It is a harsh reading for the authorities but also for the politicians.

Furthermore, I can only say: Do we not love the Swedish National Audit Office, those of us sitting in here? Do we not also love the National Property Board? Do we not love the Swedish Crime Prevention Council? Together with academia and the media, they scrutinize to the core the decisions we make in here. Swedish auditing and Swedish scrutiny of authorities is in many ways world-class. I think we sometimes need to say that to each other.

The Swedish National Audit Office notes that the Swedish Police Authority has received large additional appropriations after and during the reform. The appropriations have increased more than at any other time in history. The increase of 10,000 new police officers and a continued expansion, which we are currently in the middle of, has meant that the police's operational capacity has received a significantly larger budget.

But the results have not quite kept pace. The National Audit Office points out, among other things, that fewer crimes are being solved within many crime categories and that the clearance of personal information has decreased in many parts since the reform. It is not acceptable. It should concern us all.

For the citizens, the police reform is not an organizational chart. They do not care at all whether it is one or many agencies that are to resolve the problems they face. For them, it is about something much simpler: Does the police come when you need help? Can you trust that? Is there someone to talk to in your area whose name you know? Is there a local presence before the crimes occur, or does the police only arrive with the blue lights on? It is against these expectations that the reform's promise must be tested.

We Social Democrats share, in many respects, the National Audit Office's criticism. We absolutely do not think that everything has become worse. Many police officers do a fantastic job every day, and we follow that and see how they struggle. But we must dare to speak plainly about the management and the organization.

We have, for example, been able to see that resources have moved inward and upward. According to the National Audit Office, 3,700 employees – a remarkable figure – have been moved inward and upward between 2017 and 2024, which has led to the local police areas being largely emptied of skilled personnel. This is contrary to the intentions we had with this reform from the beginning, so 3,700 is a decisive figure.

It must also be said that Mr. Strömmer, the Minister for Justice, has taken this to heart and is working on it very clearly. Our Commissioner of the Swedish Police and the Deputy Commissioner of the Swedish Police have had a strong focus on achieving significantly better presence in the local police areas. And they are doing well. Both Strömmer and the Commissioner of the Swedish Police, I can still say as an opposition politician, have shifted focus and are doing well in the part that the criticism concerns.

We must remember that a police car is not the same as a police officer who knows the area. A temporary reinforcement is not the same as a local presence. A helicopter flyover cannot replace an experienced community police officer. A digital point of contact is not the same as a local police station.

We Social Democrats have two concrete proposals in this part.

Firstly, resources must be directed towards the local level. We need significantly more present and locally anchored police officers who know both the citizens and the area. It is not solely about nostalgia – but a little, perhaps – but it is about the state having to be able to guarantee real police presence. This naturally also applies outside the large cities.

I also want to highlight that Stockholm has had incredibly large problems with staffing its local police areas. This perhaps also reflects in the problems one has had in the vulnerable areas in our capital.

Secondly, we Social Democrats want an immediate halt to the closures of police stations – a moratorium, to use a more complicated word. For a longer period, we have been able to see that police stations have been closed across the country. They might change their names, and above all, they change and worsen the accessibility for the citizens. We believe that this must be stopped at all costs.

We took a stand already this summer and have been clear on this: Do not close any more police stations in our country! We in the oversight council have received reports that the police leadership has listened in this regard, and that is positive.

The second part of our reservation concerns that we want to review the possibility of regulated response times for the police. Today, such a system exists within the rescue services, and we actually need a completely new order that does not just guarantee a vague hope but also ensures that the police arrive on time. It is a mandatory requirement, and it is one of our proposals in the reservation.

The police are a part of our beautiful social contract. When people pay taxes, follow the law and behave correctly, they must also be able to trust that society is there when it is at its most broken and when something difficult happens. This applies to the vulnerable areas of large cities, it applies to smaller municipalities and rural areas, and it applies to business owners, the elderly, the young, and crime victims.

A present police force is not just about law and order, but it is a matter of trust in the social contract. Therefore, the principles in the 2015 police reform must be taken most seriously, and just as the Swedish National Audit Office has done in an excellent way, we must continue to follow the developments moving forward.

(Applause)

(cont. § 12)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)