Response to interpellation 2022/23:25 on visitation zones and trust in the police
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns search zones and trust in the police. M considers search zones to be a useful tool to cool down acute situations and strengthen safety 1. M argues that the tool should be geographically and time-limited, based on court decisions, and used carefully by the police 1 2. M claims that the tool creates legal certainty 3 and that there is proven experience from Denmark 3 4. S argues that search zones risk criminalizing ordinary people and creating a trust gap 5. S considers that the proposal lacks support from the police's experience and research 6 and that the tool does not increase trust 5.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! Mattias Vepsä has asked me how I view the risks associated with the proposals on visitation zones and how the government and I will ensure that society does not further sharpen the contradictions, with the risk of increased insecurity and increased violence.
We have seen a frightening development of lethal firearm violence in Sweden in recent years. My and the government's task is to do everything in our power to reverse that development. The crime prevention work shall be prioritized. Those who commit ruthless crimes shall be met with more powerful reactions than before. We will also provide the police and prosecutors with new effective tools, not least in the work against criminal networks, where the use of firearms and explosives has become part of everyday life. In some situations, a decision on a time-limited search zone can be a useful tool.
I will not deny that there are risks with such a tool, just as there are risks with all tools of that kind. That is why it is important that the rules are designed so that the system is legally secure and so that it is used sensibly and at the right times, when it can actually be of use in crime fighting.
I have full confidence that our law enforcement authorities will use the opportunity of visitation zones in a way that does not threaten privacy. On the contrary, visitation zones can contribute to strengthening the safety for honest people who otherwise experience a great insecurity in their residential areas.
I agree that trust between people and the state is central. I mean, therefore, that it is a matter of trust that our authorities are given more opportunities to curb and counter the gang crime that today limits the lives and everyday routines of people in affected areas.
Mattias Vepsä (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer for the answer.
I appreciate the Minister's answer and understand from it that the Minister sees the risks with visitation zones and does not deny them. Furthermore, it is very good that the government recognizes the importance of crime prevention measures. How much decisiveness lies behind the words we shall see; I intended to return to that in this debate.
For me, people's trust in the justice system is crucial. It is about our ability to push back the violence that is occurring in the gang criminal environments and which frightens and silences many. One way to create trust is to have more police out on the streets and squares. Another way is for the police to have an anchor – that the residents do not just see a police officer standing there but also know that they will get help when misfortune strikes and feel trust in the authority's work and methods. Therefore, the expansion of the Police Authority is crucial.
The previous government's policy was based on expanding the police and tougher punishments for criminals and more police, but also on conscious investments for equality in schools and a strengthened welfare. An important election promise from the Socialdemokraterna, which I thought I could mention here in the chamber, summarizes this policy well: Every krona invested in the police shall also be invested in preventive measures. I believe that is how we should tackle society's greatest challenges today. If we are serious about getting rid of shootings, threats, and other criminal activity in society, we must stop the new recruitment to these networks and gangs.
The police must have the right tools to investigate and solve crimes, but beyond that, society must also hold together. Everyone must help each other, and we must gather broad support for this work to succeed.
It was against this background that I asked this question. Many among me highlight the downsides of the visitation zones and the government's and the Sweden Democrats' unilateral focus on increased penalties and infringements of privacy. In his answer, the Minister touched upon the crime-prevention perspective and the risks of the proposal. As a starting point, I intended to take the goals for policy areas that the Riksdag establishes in and with the budget bill.
The goal of crime policy is to reduce crime and increase people's safety. The goal of the justice system is the individual's legal certainty and legal security.
We agree that we must get the weapons off the streets. We agree on breaking the gangs' opportunities. But we cannot criminalize ordinary people.
In the answer, the minister himself said that there are great risks with the project of visitation zones. For the person who every day of the week sets the clock, leaves the kids at preschool and heads to work, this proposal risks meaning that the road to and from work is lined with sudden police checks where one is forced to let the authorities go through one's belongings.
The Minister said in his response that ordinary honest people should not be affected. But for me, that is exactly what this proposal entails. It is quite obvious that it is precisely ordinary people who must give up some of their integrity for a visitation zone to have any kind of effect at all.
As I understand it, there are no major evaluations of the model used in Denmark. Experiences from other countries, for example the United Kingdom and the USA, show however that this form of policing does not increase the police's reach at all, nor does it increase the trust between authorities and residents in the area.
How can the minister and the government guarantee that the visitation zones will function better here in Sweden? Why should ordinary people suddenly risk being body-searched on their way to or from work?
Lars Isacsson (S)
Madam Speaker! I would like to begin by thanking Minister Gunnar Strömmer and Member Mattias Vepsä for an interesting debate.
I share Member Vepsäs' concerns regarding, among other things, increased polarization and a lack of trust. I would like to highlight one perspective as well. I am new here in the Riksdag but have twelve years as a municipal councilor in Avesta and have been chairman of the Crime Prevention Council, so I have a good deal of experience with the crime prevention work in our municipalities.
In Dalarna, we have two areas that can be characterized as vulnerable areas: Tjärna ängar in Borlänge and Krylbo in Avesta municipality. These are areas that have experienced a decline for a long period. To this was added the refugee crisis in 2015-2016, with an unfair and unsolidary distribution of responsibility, and EBO legislation that went completely wrong. Social dumping occurred from wealthy Stockholm municipalities. Persons in active substance abuse and with a criminal lifestyle had their first rent paid – then it was goodbye. The combination of overcrowding, black sublease contracts, drug abuse, and crime was anything but favorable and led to several serious crimes.
These are areas where the municipality, the police, civil society, and the property owners work very hard together to make everyday life more bearable for all the diligent citizens who live there, but also to raise the area's status. It is about achieving a mixed development with different forms of tenure and with people from different social classes and with different backgrounds living together.
When I speak with police officers in Avesta and Borlänge about visitation zones, they say that they already have this possibility today upon suspicion of a crime. They also wonder: How do we get someone to move to Krylbo or Tjärna ängar if it is a visitation zone?
Madam Speaker! My question to Minister Gunnar Strömmer is: What do I tell those police officers?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! I would like to say a thousand thanks to both Mattias Vepsä and Lars Isacsson for good, well-considered and justified questions both regarding crime fighting in general and the conditions for it, and regarding the visitation zones more specifically.
To begin with, one must probably clarify what a visitation zone is. Now we are going to investigate that question, so exactly what a visitation zone will be in Sweden remains to be seen. Based on experiences from other countries – our starting point is the Danish model – there are, however, some things that are quite important.
The first thing is that it concerns a delimited geographical area. The second thing is that it is time-limited. To relate to the experience from Sweden, or from Avesta, it is naturally not the case that any residential area anywhere in Sweden will permanently be regarded as a visitation zone where the police or other law enforcement agencies are free to carry out body searches. Under no circumstances is it that way, but rather it is geographically limited and time-limited. We have also said that the starting point is that it should be done through a court decision, that is to say that an arbitrary decision cannot be made on the spot in the field.
It is sometimes said that there are no evaluations of the Danish experience. When it comes to the entire broad work against, above all, the criminal gangs, I will not shy away from saying that we largely base our starting point on the Danish experience. It concerns everything from double sentences for gang criminals to new sanctions such as stay bans, i.e., that one should not be able to just come back to the area where one has been a gang criminal, and about tools to be able to find weapons etc. to a greater extent.
There are solid evaluations made by the Danish Ministry of Justice regarding everything except the search zones. On the other hand, there is 20-25 years of experience from the Danish police of using search zones, and that is documented. And what does that experience say? Well, it says that it is often search zones that are used first, most often when something very concrete has happened, such as a shooting or perhaps several shootings in a row. Then, for a certain period in a certain geographical area, one may need to expand the possibilities to search for weapons and cool down an acute situation. It is also this that I envision regarding the Swedish use.
Lars Isacsson refers to police officers in the field who are skeptical of this method. And I believe it is a fair description of police and other so-called forensic experts that one can get somewhat different perceptions from different sides. My experience, after having spoken several times with the police – I am happy to meet Lars Isacsson's police officers at home in Avesta – is that everything will land on how one should use such a tool. It will be completely decisive. This tool is also not entirely different from other similar tools. The police can already today, upon suspicion of a crime, carry out searches. It is also a tool that already today must be handled with great caution.
If I may broaden the perspective, I inherit an investigation that the Riksdag pushed forward and the Social Democratic government perhaps was forced, but still with some pleasure, I believe, to initiate regarding preventive coercive measures, i.e., secret telephone surveillance and other such things. If misused, it can involve very large risks to legal certainty. If used correctly and properly balanced when it comes to legal certainty guarantees, it can be very effective.
In summary, based on the experiences of other countries, this can be an important tool that our law enforcement agencies lack today. It must be handled with care and judgment, and I trust that the Swedish police have that ability.
Mattias Vepsä (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the detailed answer.
We know that the absolute majority of the shootings and a very large part of the crime connected to the shootings occur in certain areas. They occur near the drug scenes and in the most vulnerable and neglected areas in our cities.
I appreciate the Minister's answer that we must look more closely at what a visitation zone could and could not be. But the experience that we have all shared in the form of testimonies from the Danish police or experiences in other parts of the world is that in the most vulnerable areas, both the guilty and the innocent will be able to be subject to visitation.
I understand the security aspect that the Minister wants to emphasize, but for me, it does not become trust-building. It risks, as very many are concerned about right now, that one will be stopped from everything from internal meetings to site visits. There is concern about how it will be, how it will go with the trust in the Police Authority if we feel singled out.
Despite the acute situation, I believe we must be able to think long-term and value the cooperation between civil society, authorities, and the residents very highly, and that we must not make a misstep and withdraw our support for this work, which I believe is the long-term right thing to do.
I also think that it is not the youths or the party-goers at the pubs on Stureplan who will be affected. It is instead the most vulnerable areas that we constantly zoom in on in the debate, even though we know that there is a very large amount of drugs in circulation on Stureplan. That means that some constantly have to walk around with stomach aches and feel anxious about being stopped by the police, and they also testify to that today.
In the DN, there was a testimony from a Danish police officer, which I believe was what made me submit the interpellation, about how one tries to maintain some kind of integrity perspective in this. He says that what one can do is to take the person to be searched behind a bush, so that it feels better. That doesn't just put the person being searched in a vulnerable position, it also puts an enormous pressure on individual police officers to handle these tools in a correct way.
Already today, many feel very singled out by society simply because of their appearance or because they live in a certain place. The police already have a tough job today. Despite that, they do a very fine job, and that is an opinion that many share with me. But if we are to break the segregation and push back the crime, which has taken a particularly firm hold in the neglected areas, we cannot do that by creating a trust gap between authorities, civil society, and the residents.
Just as was said in previous posts, and as the minister himself mentions in his response, there is a skepticism within the police that is important to take note of. It is the profession that knows what they are talking about. And precisely this tool is not so strongly demanded in the investigations that we have been part of.
The last thing I want to say is that I think it is great that the Minister, in his answer and here in the rostrum, speaks about preventive activities. But how does the Minister intend for the government's decision on less money for welfare in the economically vulnerable situation we have to strengthen the most vulnerable schools and the already strained social services?
Why is the government with the Sweden Democrats at the helm so convinced of the opposite of the experience that exists? And why is it so important to push through the proposal, which lacks the police's support as well as support from experience, research, and evaluation?
Lars Isacsson (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer for the answer. I appreciate that he also highlights the difficulties and shortcomings that the tool of visitation zones entails. I also thank him for the offer to meet the police together, and I gladly welcome him to Dalarna.
I can also state that we have different views on whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in the issue of visitation zones. The question hangs in the air. The Minister of Justice speaks of how ordinary honest people should not be affected, but I then pose the question: How do we get ordinary honest people to stay in a visitation zone and how do we get ordinary honest people to move to a visitation zone?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! I will begin with the concrete question that Lars Isacsson poses about how to get people to move there and how to get people to stay. Let me nevertheless say that it is a very good start to achieve that legal certainty.
People can certainly have different views on the issue. I personally remember a segment on SVT, where they interviewed some younger girls who were hesitant or skeptical about the arguments put forward for visitation zones. But they also interviewed a street vendor a hundred meters away who would want such a zone every day of the week, all year round. We cannot offer that. But I think it shows that the security of the rule of law is of such incredibly important value for creating attractiveness and safety for people, regardless of where they live in Sweden. This applies not least in those areas that are subject to a great deal of serious and organized crime.
When it comes to personal privacy, I find it very easy to intuitively sympathize with the arguments, but this matter of privacy is also a broader issue. The major losses of privacy that occur when people are subjected to very serious crime are enormous, and there are few things that are as invasive of privacy as being subjected to a crime. The state even provides financial compensation to crime victims just for the loss of privacy that it entails to be affected by a crime. If we are to be fair, we therefore have several privacy interests that we must satisfy simultaneously.
I do not want to be unnecessarily polemical with the Social Democrats, but rhetorically it still sounded to a large extent before the election as if every stone would be turned. But when it comes to the crunch, I mean that S is not so inclined to turn over every stone.
There is proven experience from other countries that have succeeded in reversing this criminal development. We do not need to look further than Denmark, and there are some components that the judicial and law enforcement authorities highlight as the most important parts of the toolbox. I have mentioned some: double sentences for gang criminals, anonymous witnesses as a tool to be able to break the culture of silence - which is monumental in Sweden and widespread in a way that is deeply harmful to a democratic state governed by the rule of law and a decent society - new sanctions, for example, residency bans, i.e., a ban on returning to certain geographical areas after serving a sentence. Visitation zones are another such tool.
Sweden does not have this today, and I think we should look at the countries that have been more successful than we have been in reversing this development and dare to do what the Social Democrats said before the election: turn over every stone.
Every such tool in the hands of the authorities can be used in a way that becomes insecure in terms of the rule of law. This applies not only to search zones but to searches in general. Mattias Vepsä touched upon what is commonly called racial profiling, i.e., that one goes after appearance more than other circumstances that justify an intervention. It is a general problem when it comes to internal immigration control, but everyone realizes that internal immigration control is an indispensable measure if one is to maintain order and tidiness in a country. But it can be done in a good way and in a bad way.
By using secret coercive measures not only in connection with preliminary investigations but also to prevent crimes before there is a concrete suspicion of a crime, something I believe we will agree on when the government brings it to the chamber, Sweden undoubtedly takes a step that involves privacy risks. But when used correctly, it can also make an indispensable difference. It is all about how discerning individuals in our law enforcement agencies, with the help of clear rules, use the tool, and I have great confidence in the police and other authorities in this regard.
Mattias Vepsä (S)
Madam Speaker! We do not shrink from the idea of turning over stones to tackle serious crime. The government is not taking over in a situation where nothing has been done; rather, the previous government did a lot in this area to push back the most serious crime, get weapons off the streets, and give the police clearer tools.
At the same time, we see the need to reduce the gaps and, as my colleague Lars pointed out, increase the attractiveness in all parts of our cities and give all young people and children, regardless of whether they are born here or in another part of the world, equal conditions and opportunities to embark on a life journey and succeed in our country.
One must maintain both of these perspectives in the crime prevention work and when it comes to pushing back the gangs.
I simultaneously appreciate the openness that exists regarding turning and twisting the proposals contained in the Tidö Agreement. They do not therefore seem too attached to this paper, and there is an opportunity to consider the pros and cons of them.
Of course one can go to Denmark, but even if an evaluation at a department has looked at the whole, the part we are pointing out is missing, namely a clear evaluation of the effects of specifically visitation zones. If one takes the effort to go a bit further, one sees in other parts of the world that these have not had an effect, and that it is a matter of working preventatively and together in residential areas to build relationships and long-term perspectives and thereby give our law enforcement authority, the police, better tools to tackle the problems.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Madam Speaker! All the proposals that I have raised and which the Danish experience is based on – double penalties, anonymous witnesses and search zones – the Social Democrats have said no to. It therefore does not only concern the search zones.
We will, of course, lean on proven experience. One reason why this was not evaluated within the framework of the so-called gang packages in Denmark is that this was introduced a long time ago. It has been integrated into the Danish police's way of working for 20-25 years, and there are evaluations made that have also been presented in the Danish Folketing.
This is one component in the Danish packages, but there are many others that we also want to implement. These packages were implemented by a previous bourgeois government and were evaluated by a Ministry of Justice under a Social Democratic Minister of Justice, who concluded that the previous packages had been successful. Now, the Danish Social Democratic government, when it takes office, will implement new packages in the same direction. It is in this direction that we want to go, and here there is proven experience.
Of course, one can look to countries far away, and I am open to incorporating all experience. But it is no coincidence that we often turn to our Nordic neighboring countries because they, in many respects, resemble Sweden in terms of both society and the legal order.
This is an example. But many other tools have also been tested and proven to be effective in restoring public safety and pushing back organized crime and shootings – combined with good legal certainty.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.