Response to interpellation 2023/24:409 on police officers with a foreign background
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
M believes that the police should reflect society to strengthen legitimacy and trust 1, and that diversity adds value 1. M emphasizes, however, that recruitment must be based on equal treatment and high quality requirements without preferential treatment or quotas 2 3. S argues that a lack of diversity is a problem as cultural knowledge and language skills are added values for efficiency 4, and that diversity leads to greater broad-mindedness 4. S points out that there is a discrepancy between ambitions and reality 5 and that they have previously taken measures to broaden recruitment 6. SD considers that a focus on appearance over competence is racist 7 and that the police should consist of competent individuals 8 9.
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! It is often said that the wheels of democracy turn slowly, but obviously not today in the Swedish Riksdag. But now we are here!
Petter Löberg has asked me whether I share, among other things, the Swedish Police Authority's concerns regarding that we have an all too poor representation of persons with a foreign background within the police profession, and what concrete measures I and the government intend to take to get more police officers with a foreign background.
The proportion of police officers with a foreign background has increased every year since 2005 and has more than doubled since then. The proportion is lower compared to the population at large, even if the comparison is not relevant in all parts. To be an eligible applicant for the police training, Swedish citizenship is required.
The police have a mission that is fundamental to society, and therefore it is important that the composition of the police personnel reflects society to the greatest extent possible. This is significant both for the police's legitimacy and the public's trust in the police, and for the police's ability to carry out its mission with the best possible competence.
It is the Swedish Police Authority that is responsible for recruitment and staffing. Over the years, the authority has taken several measures to increase diversity within the police. Among other things, targeted information initiatives have been used to encourage individuals from underrepresented groups to apply for police training. This has occurred in channels where the target group is present, for example via social media or in connection with various events. In the authority's work to attract applicants to police training, there is a particular focus on getting more women and more people with a foreign background to apply.
The Police Authority's competence supply is completely central to carrying out the authority's mission and achieving good results in its operations. In order to strengthen the police's ability to combat crime, more police officers are needed, among other things. It is the government's objective that the police density shall increase so that it at least corresponds to the average in the EU. The government has given the Police Authority a mandate in the regulatory letter for 2024 to ensure that at least the current growth rate in the number of police officers continues after the end of 2024. The Police Authority shall also take measures to increase the number of suitable police students, and in that work, diversity is very important.
Petter Löberg (S)
Madam Speaker! Initially, I must of course thank you for a well-formulated response which also essentially confirms the picture I present in my interpellation. There is a palpable discrepancy between the Police Authority's ambitions regarding diversity and how it de facto looks at present.
The problem is not primarily getting people with a foreign background to apply for the police training - in that regard, the frequency is very high. Even if one removes foreign citizens from the equation, the average lies approximately where it should lie based on the population's structure. The mysterious thing in this context is instead what happens during the journey. We still do not have a really good answer to this.
Why do people with a foreign background not start at the police training programs to the extent implied by the number of applications and the needs that exist? The answer is therefore not that these people do not apply and that with the help of various campaigns or similar, more should be made to apply. Something happens along the way. What happens is the great mystery.
I have worked as a teacher for 24 years and have naturally had many students with a foreign background in my classes. Many of them have wanted to become police officers. Some people may have bad experiences with the police in the countries that their parents or they themselves come from, but on the whole, police is a sought-after profession among these groups. Many of these people are eager to begin the training for the multifaceted and fine profession that the police profession is, but somewhere along the way, something happens.
About ten years ago, we were at the training in Växjö. The principal there, who has now retired, described how she decided to – more or less in her spare time – look at the number of applicants of foreign origin in relation to how many who attended the training programs in our country at that time. At that time – it must have been around 2015 – the students at the police training who were of foreign origin could be counted on one hand. The total number of students was closer to 1,000. This was completely unacceptable on all possible levels.
In my interpellation, I asked a general question, and I am very grateful that the Minister for Justice described that he shares the view that diversity within the police has various positive effects, including for the agency's efficiency. The second part of the question, however, was rather about what concrete measures the Minister intends to take to increase diversity. He described the directive on an increase in the number of employees in the volume target that exists, which the majority and the opposition agree on, but I would like to hear the Minister for Justice philosophize a bit about the concrete measures.
Katja Nyberg (SD)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the Minister for Justice for the answer.
It is remarkable that Petter Löberg proceeds from the assumption that it is more important how a police officer looks than what a police officer should be able to do. To implicitly claim that applicants to the police training are being weeded out because of skin color or ethnic origin is racist. That people with an immigrant background would also have low confidence in police officers with a Swedish background actually says more about them. The identity politics that the Social Democrats are engaged in is rooted in making people victims because of belonging to a certain group.
The Swedish police need everyone who passes the tests. It is true that fewer people with an immigrant background than ethnic Swedes pass the tests. In an attempt to get more admitted to the police training, the Swedish test was removed in 2012, but it did not yield the expected result. Instead, it has led to the level of the admitted's Swedish language skills generally becoming worse.
The question is how much one actually should twist and turn the admission requirements to get more admitted to the police training. I do not mean just people with a foreign background. If one were to ask applicants to the police training what they really want, I am sure they would say that they want to be admitted on their own merits and not because of specific group affiliation. Quite honestly, I find it repulsive that Petter Löberg tries to make it sound as if the Total Defence Duty and Examination Authority, which handles the recruitment to the police training, would deliberately exclude people who pass the tests because of skin color or ethnicity. In that case, one is actually very prejudiced.
Pontus Andersson Garpvall (SD)
Mr. Speaker! I have a dream: that my small children will one day live in a country where they are not judged by the color of their skin but by their character. Sometimes when I listen to proposals about various quotas or about the composition of people within different professions should reflect society - that is, when politicians place weight on people's origins rather than on their will or competence - I wonder if they have perhaps simply forgotten Martin Luther King's famous words. It may come as a surprise, but regarding people's right to equal opportunities, I am very liberal.
Just as Petter Löberg mentioned in his interpellation, around 7 percent of the police force have a foreign background. In the population as a whole, the proportion is approximately four times as large. Then the question is: What does it actually matter? People with a foreign background have exactly the same opportunity to apply for police training as people with a Swedish background do. That the figures look the way they do is simply a matter of people's free choice. Obviously, people with a foreign background, at a group level, do not have as much interest in becoming police officers.
There is a difference between equal opportunities and equal outcomes. The opportunity to become a police officer should be equal—how the outcome turns out is not as interesting. It is no stranger than the fact that a large majority of nurses and preschool teachers are women while a large majority of truck drivers and warehouse workers are men. Then perhaps we would have wished that the situation were different and that it reflected society to a greater extent, but this is, after all, the consequence of people's free choices and will. Let it be!
In the argument regarding why it would be important to have more people with a foreign background within the police force, it is often mentioned that this would provide higher legitimacy and that trust between the police and minority groups would be damaged. The problem here, as I see it, is the following: If it is now the case that people in, for example, certain suburbs have more trust in people with a foreign background than in people with a Swedish background, it says, just as Katja Nyberg said, more about them than about the Swedish police. It is, in that case, certain minority groups' attitudes toward the majority society and toward Swedes that need to change.
If I, for example, call Försäkringskassan and get to speak with someone with a foreign background, I do not have less confidence in that person because I am Swedish, but for some reason, some reason like that when it comes to issues linked to the police. Furthermore, we do live in Sweden, and then one has to accept that many who work within the police have a Swedish background.
The question of representation is therefore misplaced; this should rather be seen the other way around. We should not intervene against people's free will. The proportion of people with a foreign background within the police is a result of people's interest in the profession.
My question is rather why the solution to some people's mistrust of the police would be that the proportion of people with Swedish background within the police is reduced. And if this is the solution, what does it then say about those people who mistrust the police or have less confidence in the police because of the police's ethnic background?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the members for the opportunity to discuss these important issues.
I will begin with a perspective regarding issues of equal treatment, discrimination, recruitment, and diversity. My view is that diversity – in the sense of people with different backgrounds of experience – adds value in very many contexts. This applies both within the police and within other important activities in a society. This is not the fundamental question, I mean. The question is rather how, in the next step, one considers how to approach this in terms of legislation, rules, methods for recruitment, and other matters.
I mean that there is no evidence that the difference between the number of applications and the number of accepted applicants has anything to do with discrimination or unequal treatment in the admission of applicants to the police training.
I think the reasonable starting point is that high requirements are set for the individuals who are to enter the training programs. We know that a very small proportion of those who apply, regardless of background, are admitted to the police training.
I mean that it is primarily about how one can, in that case, broaden the recruitment base so that more people live up to the high requirements that must apply to be admitted to the police training. It is partly about getting more people who apply to the police training at all, because some training programs today actually have difficulty filling their places. But it is, of course, also about people who have a different background than the average being considered for the police training to a greater extent than they are today.
When it comes to concrete measures, I think that fundamentally – and there I want to give both Katja Nyberg and Pontus Andersson Garpvall credit – it is not about lowering requirements, sorting based on ethnic background, or treating people applying for police training differently. It must instead be a strong basic chord of equal treatment.
When it comes to all measures that breathe lowered quality requirements, preferential treatment or quotas, it is my firm opinion that we shall reject these both for certain principled reasons and for legal reasons, because, in short, it is not permitted to work in that manner.
Other measures, which may be intended to broaden the base, are, on the other hand, both permitted and fully legitimate. It is very reasonable that it is the Police Authority, which is responsible for the recruitment to the training, that works with these issues and that they do not receive instructions from my side or from a political standpoint on exactly how this work should be conducted.
In that part, I want to say fundamentally that it is important to have a broad base and to include people with different backgrounds. And I am not just talking about ethnicity, but it also concerns socioeconomics and people from different parts of the country. There are a lot of different backgrounds that can, in and of themselves, build a stronger and better police force, but it should not happen by lowering quality requirements or by engaging in discriminatory or quota-based methods to reach the goals.
Let me conclude by saying something about trust. I believe that the truly great risk to trust that we face right now as a society is that parts of society experience that we are turning away, that the state is not stepping forward, and that the state is not doing everything it can to break the development of, for example, gross and very violent crime.
A key to not ending up there is to have a competent, discerning and experienced police force. That must be the starting point for our work. The starting point cannot primarily be what people who are part of the police force themselves have for ethnic background.
Petter Löberg (S)
Mr. Speaker! Time is running out; one never thought that one would hear a Sverigedemokrat cite Martin Luther King from this rostrum! But it is indeed wonderful that one can witness remarkable and surprising things in life.
The Minister for Justice says in his response: The police have a mission of social importance, and it is therefore particularly important that the police have a staff composition that reflects society as much as possible.
I assume that this wording is coordinated with those who are part of the Minister for Justice's government base. That is, it is not the impression one gets from the two contributions made here just now from the rostrum, where the speakers obviously see no problem with the fact that those with foreign origin are four times as underrepresented as those who have both parents born and living in Sweden. The Sweden Democrats, therefore, do not experience it as being a problem.
My follow-up question to the Minister for Justice is obvious: Does Minister for Justice Strömmer share the view that this is not a major problem?
I can go by what science and the authority themselves say. They point out at least three different factors that can be significant when it comes to added value or possibly problems if there is not a diversity in the police.
It is about the supply of competence. The fact that one has knowledge of the cultural conditions in, for example, the suburbs is an added value for the police. Language skills are often a prerequisite to, both when it comes to covert coercive measures and in other contexts, be able to interpret what is going on or what has happened, which is one of the police's main missions.
Having good knowledge of both culture and language is a prerequisite for efficiency within the Swedish Police Authority. If this is lacking, it will also result in a lack of efficiency and the clearance rate, which naturally concerns the trust that the Minister for Justice described. That is the first part.
The second part can be seen from many other perspectives. It is about the trust that the Police Authority must maintain, particularly in especially vulnerable areas. We can make many international comparisons where this trust has failed and where the contract has been completely shattered, not least in the country that is often a pioneer for Sweden, namely the USA. In large parts of the USA, there is a police force that basically only comes from certain groups of society while the population comes from others. This leads to enormously large problems when it comes to the issue of trust.
The third part concerns legal certainty and democracy. It is often said that diversity within the police force is assumed to lead to greater breadth of perspective and an understanding that there is, in fact, discrimination in our society.
I can state that there is extensive discrimination in our society when it comes to the housing market, when it comes to the labor market, and when it comes to other factors in everyday life in society. There, discrimination is an entirely very tangible reality for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in our country. It is something that we naturally must also address in this room.
My question to the Minister of Justice is fundamentally: Does the Minister of Justice share the view of the two Sverigedemokrater who previously spoke here that this is not a problem? The Sverigedemokrater are, after all, the prerequisite for the Minister of Justice being the Minister of Justice.
Katja Nyberg (SD)
Mr. Speaker! An important aspect that Petter Löberg seems to have missed can be seen when one looks at the figures regarding the number of police officers with a foreign background compared to the total number in Sweden.
The average age of a Swedish police officer today is 42.2 years. Most police officers were born in the 80s and 90s. In 1980, 7.5 percent of Sweden's population were born abroad - and only 3.4 percent if we exclude persons born in other Nordic countries. In 1990, 9.2 percent were born abroad - and only 5.4 percent if we exclude persons born in other Nordic countries.
Among those applying for the police training last year, 23 percent had a foreign background. Among those who came to the examination, the proportion fell to 16 percent, and among those confirmed admitted to the training, the figure was down to 9 percent. This means that overall, the development within the Swedish police is completely normal and follows the population curve.
If, on the other hand, one looks at other professions, for example within the defense, one sees that the proportion of officers with foreign origin is 3 percent. When it comes to soldiers, the proportion is 4.5 percent. Should not the Swedish defense represent the population better, in the way the Socialdemokraterna want? Or should we quota in Swedes who lack foreign origin to better represent the population among, for example, dentists or healthcare personnel? You hear it yourselves; it becomes absurd.
I would finally like to add that the most important thing is not that the Swedish police should reflect society. The most important thing is that we have the right police, i.e., skilled and competent police officers who can handle the complex profession that policing is.
Pontus Andersson Garpvall (SD)
Mr. Speaker! Thanks to the Minister for Justice for a good answer! We have a police shortage in Sweden. It is a legacy from previous governments that the Sweden Democrats and the current government are now trying to rectify.
I would say it like this: We need all the competence we can get for the profession. High requirements should be placed on those who apply for the training, and the interest needs to be even higher than it is now. But that being said, the proportion of certain specific groups does not need to be higher, whether it is men, women, people with a Swedish background, people with a foreign background, or anything else. For my part, that is not interesting.
The only interesting thing is that we can get more people with sufficient competence to want to become police officers. In my opinion, that is the only sound and liberal approach that we should adhere to.
Everyone, as has been said, has the same opportunity to apply. Probably, the group that applies will not reflect society because people have different interests and different goals. However, that does not matter all that much. The important thing is that the opportunities to become a police officer have been and are the same and that the requirements are equal regardless of gender and background.
Based on that basic attitude, I think we are all working together so that as many as possible will want to become police officers.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! I would like to emphasize what I perceive everyone is in agreement on in this discussion, namely that we must get more people who are suitable and meet high qualification requirements to both apply to the police and eventually be admitted to a police training and come out and be active police officers. The need is enormous.
For my part, this is not primarily – and not secondarily or tertiarily either, for that matter – about achieving some kind of outcome justice between different groups. We can broaden the perspective and look at it historically: Why was it very important to break the social skew in recruitment to higher education from a socially beneficial point of view? It is clear that at the individual level, it provided an opportunity for academically gifted young people from homes without a tradition of study to come to their rights. In that way, there were many individual gains with it. But we have also historically spoken about a talent reserve. There were previously very many qualities and qualifications that did not come to their rights in society at large.
One can view it in different ways, but when it has, for example, concerned actively trying to break gender patterns in recruitment for different professions, my perspective in any case has not primarily been to achieve justice between different groups in society. Rather, it has been about that there can be a strong interest in ensuring that many competent applicants who never come into consideration because they never reach out actually reach out and become subjects of a recruitment process. This must then be characterized by non-discrimination and equal treatment and be free from elements such as quotas or sorting based on factors that the individuals themselves cannot influence.
I therefore think that from the police's point of view, it is rational to ask: Are there citizens out there who should be applying to the police but who do not? How can we get more qualified people to apply to the police? Here, I believe there is a legitimacy in taking a broader approach when it comes to recruitment. What is, however, very concerning is if one manipulates or changes the admission requirements to achieve different outcomes at a group level that have nothing at all to do with the original and legitimate purpose of the operation.
It also leads me to questions about discrimination. There is no doubt that discrimination of various degrees in different contexts exists in all societies. However, I think there is very weak support for the claim that the recruitment to the police training in some way would be characterized by discrimination or have discriminatory elements. Such a hint or such a claim must probably be qualified and clarified properly so that one can address it. I do not see that there is any support for that assumption. Rather, it is in that case a matter of that too few people who meet the qualification requirements that have been set up and which are legitimate apply for the training.
When it comes to confidence and trust, I do think that there are values in different contexts in society reflecting society as a whole in a reasonable way. This can also be significant from a confidence and trust perspective. I would, however, say that other issues are more important when it comes to trust and confidence.
The great trust risk we now face, if we speak, for example, about socially disadvantaged areas - this is also confirmed in various surveys regarding trust in the police - is that the police are not there or do not have sufficiently effective tools to maintain safety, security, and freedom of movement for citizens, regardless of where in the country one lives. It is the single most important trust issue, and we must not forget that in this discussion.
Petter Löberg (S)
Mr. Speaker! I asked two questions to the Minister for Justice. The first was about whether he agrees with these submissions from the Sweden Democrats. I have not received any answer to that, but he does have a chance here in the final round. I therefore assume that I will receive an answer as to whether he shares the Sweden Democrats' view on this question. There is nothing about it in the Minister for Justice's written response, so an oral clarification would be very good.
The second question concerned concrete measures to remedy the imbalance regarding diversity within the police that exists. It is not something made up, but it does exist. We have not received any such measures.
As a concrete example, I can mention what we Social Democrats did in government. We started two new police trainings, in Malmö and in Borås. This was done for many reasons, primarily to meet the growth but also to broaden the recruitment both in terms of age and geography and also from other aspects such as diversity. We have therefore taken concrete measures to remedy this, but it has not been sufficient.
Some speakers here have in different ways tried to imply that I am saying it is a matter of discrimination when it comes to the police training. There is nothing about that in my interpellation, and there is also nothing about that in what I have said from the rostrum. What I have said is that we do not know, and if we do not know things, we have to find out. It is not stranger than that.
At the same time, we have several other emerging issues regarding the question of diversity within the police. We have this with security screenings, which will further strain this part. We also have the proposals regarding what you call security zones and we call visitation zones, which in the worst case will also challenge and stretch the patience when it comes to the trust for the police in these areas.
I would very much like to have answers from the Minister for Justice on these two questions, if that is possible.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! I have spent quite a few minutes explaining my view on these issues. The one that is not entirely unanalytical can probably settle for that.
I personally think, and I am happy to repeat it, that it has value to try to get people with different backgrounds – and then I am not just talking about ethnicity but also about socioeconomics, gender, and geography – to apply to the police, for the simple reason that we need very many police officers who are to live up to high-set quality requirements. We need many applicants and cannot afford the luxury of not having all parts of society apply to the police academy. I also say that a police force that in a decent way reflects society at large in various respects can be significant even from a trust and legitimacy perspective.
What I am, however, very clear about is the following: My basic principle when it comes to discrimination, equal treatment, diversity, and recruitment is that we shall not sort people based on ethnic background or other factors that they themselves cannot influence. It is no coincidence that this is also not permitted. The basic principle in our anti-discrimination legislation is equal treatment, that we shall not engage in such sorting. It is a very important fundamental principle for me to highlight.
When it comes to measures for growth, we have a close interaction with the Swedish Police Authority and have received and will receive more reporting on which measures must be taken so that we can continue a growth journey for a long time to come in Sweden. I look forward to that. At that point, we will also return to which of these parts presuppose political decisions.
Let me finally say something regarding the security zones. The debate that we have seen over the past week has in many respects been quite deplorable. What it is fundamentally about is that people, regardless of where they live in the country, should know that the politics deliver tools to the police so that it can step forward and safeguard everyone's safety, security, and freedom in a much better way than today. That, I mean, is the absolutely crucial question from a trust perspective for the police, for politics, and for society as a whole.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.