Safety Measurement System in Swedish Policing 1998 – 2021

The purpose of this lecture is to provide information of an innovative system for policing crime-fighting, disorder and victimization, and especially emphazising how the system facilitates crime prevention work. Other achievements in Sweden are that the system over decades has produced academic results over time with 100,000s of respondents answers in 100s of municipalities, using the same questions and data collection method over 23 years. No doubt that a lot of initiatives in the area of public influence of policing has been taken throughout the world, especially in the fields of community policing, however there are few systematically done in a longsighted mindful way.

I am going to supplement the hypothesis of efficiency in policing and crime prevention with concrete on-going police research examples from Sweden last decades and a couple of illustrations from my experiences in Albania. The concept of the citizen´s perspective and satisfaction in police work, normally only expressed on a large scale in the planning documents and work plans, must be put in concrete form and made measurable. I will show the major obstacles to be IRL- successful,with a particular focus on whether these working methods, collaborative structures and new tools actually increase Police efficiency, reduce exposure to crime, boost safety and lift public confidence in Sweden during the last years.