To Örebro University

The Swedish social democratic welfare state seems to be the result of some unique historical set of circumstances. A vital condition seems to be that reform instead of revolution became the king’s way to changing society. In practice this meant that a certain set of problematizationswere put to use which pointed toward the welfare state as a political solution. My interest here is how the welfare state was opened as a political arena. For Vanessa Barker the social democratic welfare state is not the solution to “(…) a more just and equal penal order” (2013, p. 21). On the contrary, due to ethno-nationalism and weak constitutional traditions regarding individual rights, the Swedish welfare state has a tendency toward repressiveness against individuals deemed as “others.”

In 2015 a reform made the national Swedish police even more centralized as a means for improving efficiency and results. This was exactly fifty years after the original nationalization of the police – a reform said to be done in the same spirit of centralizing for efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and problematize the arguments behind the nationalization in 1965. How and why was the police nationalized and what was the chief political arguments for doing this? The paper also aims to discuss what the meaning of efficiency in policing means politically. 

Boken beskriver och analyserar den svenska kriminalpolitikens utveckling från en institutionsbaserad och straffbetonad kriminalpolitik i statens regi, över välfärdsstatens sociala ingenjörskonst, till dagens ”nya” kriminalpolitik med växande betoning på liberala styrningsmodeller, kontroll och risktänkande. Strafftänkandet har fått en renässans, samtidigt som brottsoffren uppmärksammas allt mer.I denna reviderade och utökade upplaga diskuterar författarna särskilt vilken betydelse EU-medlemskapet har haft för den svenska kriminalpolitiken samt hur den förändrade situationen i världen – inte minst hotet från terrorismen och de ökade flyktingströmmarna – lett till en gradvis sammansmältning av kriminalpolitiken med säkerhetspolitiken.

The downfall of the rehabilitative ideal is considered a decisive episode if we want to understand the changes that have transpired in crime policy the last three to four decades. In Sweden, the downfall followed abruptly on the final establishing of individual prevention as theoretical bases for crime policy by the enactment of a new penal code in 1965. This paper follows the trajectory of the downfall in Sweden by doing a genealogy thereof. The purpose is to contribute to a more empirically developed understanding of the course of Swedish crime policy during the formative years of the 1970s to the early 1990s. Firstly, the paper addresses the topic by examining the scholarly critique that paved the way for the downfall of the rehabilitative ideal. Secondly, the paper analyses the political handling of the downfall and the consequence this had for policy. Methodological this is done by way of genealogy exploring the historical pedigree of present-day crime policy in Sweden, not as a linear development, but as plural and sometimes contradictory pasts. Theoretical the paper aims to analyze the trajectory by way of a governmentality perspective, i.e. it focuses on crime policy as a means of governing life and the population, thus exploring the different forms governing takes.

The purpose of this paper is to problematize neuropsychiatryas public claims maker within a Swedish context. This will be done by applying what I conceptualize as a culture of intervention. Additionally, the paper also will show how neuropsychiatry’s public position interacts with a governance that works as a moral engineering. Governing is in the study understood as structuring the field of possible actions — what can be done or not is that which needs to be controlled. Neuropsychiatry seems to be the “essence” of the conduct of conduct — it is a knowledge-production that produces self-regulated subjects. The object is to analyse the conditions that make certain practises acceptable at a certain moment. I use it as a way of problematizing the generally accepted idea of scientific progress that underwrites the history of the neuropsychiatric diagnoses as an uncovering journey towards completion. The paper looks at how these neuropsychiatric diagnoses have become naturalized and given, an unquestionable regulatory knowledge that explain as well as prescribe what to do. This is further related to how the Swedish welfare state has gone from a social engineering rational to a moral engineering rational that builds on individuals taking responsibility over their own life.