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Kriminologiska institutionen
Extended Arm of the Law
How Swedish Policy Documents Have Portrayed the
Justifications for Order Guards
Examensarbete för magisterexamen i kriminologi, 15 HP Kriminologi Avancerad nivå Vårterminen 2018 Enes Al Weswasi
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
Abstract
Contemporary policing has slowly fragmented during the last decades resulting in a wide array
of policing agencies. One of the key actors in Swedish modern policing are order guards
(ordningsvakter). A privately employed policing agent that has the authority to partly act police
and to use legitimate force if deemed necessary. Order guards has however not always been a
commercial or a permanent policing figure in Swedish policing.
By analysing a series of State’s Official Reports (SOU), published between the
1970’s and 2018, this study highlights how the authors of these reports have portrayed and
justified the use order guards in Sweden. The described rationalities are contrasted against the
theory of plural policing which describes the emergence and possible explanations of the
fragmented policing landscape.
The outcomes of this study are that the Swedish police organisation has
continuously been described as having multiple and increasing constraints that the police are
unable to withstand without the help of non-state actors. The origin of the experienced strains
varies depending on decade from increasing crime rates, understaffed police to difficulties
policing rural areas and increased commercialisation of the public space. The reallocating of
duties, onto private alternatives, has however also created a merger between the public and the
private sphere but with the police governing the procedures. These outcomes offer implications
for the theory, who has been criticised for primary covering Anglo-Saxon conditions, but the
implications also provide a basis for further discussion concerning the role the welfare society
plays in social control.
Keywords: Plural Policing; Private policing; Document analysis; Policy documents; SOU.
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Content
1 Extended Arm of the Law ................................................................................................................. 1
1.1 Targeting the Research Problem .................................................................................................................. 3
1.2 Purpose & Research Question ...................................................................................................................... 4
1.3 Delimitation ................................................................................................................................................. 4
2 Theoretical Departure & Literature Review ................................................................................... 5
2.1 Relevant Concepts & Definitions ................................................................................................................ 5
2.1.1 What Constitutes Policing? .................................................................................................................. 5
2.1.2 Defining the Private Security Industry ................................................................................................. 6
2.1.3 Order Guards ....................................................................................................................................... 6
2.1.4 Plural Policing ..................................................................................................................................... 7
2.2 Making Sense of Plural Policing: Theoretical Framework .......................................................................... 7
2.2.1 Public Fiscal Constraints ..................................................................................................................... 7
2.2.2 Mass Private Property ......................................................................................................................... 8
2.2.3 Relevant Criticism .............................................................................................................................. 10
2.3 Order Guards in Sweden ............................................................................................................................ 11
3 Methodology & Data ....................................................................................................................... 12
3.1 Source of Data ........................................................................................................................................... 12
3.2 Sampling .................................................................................................................................................... 13
3.3 Analytic Strategy ....................................................................................................................................... 15
3.4 Procedure ................................................................................................................................................... 15
3.5 Validity & Reliability ................................................................................................................................ 17
3.6 Methodological Constraints ....................................................................................................................... 17
4 How Swedish Policy Documents Have Portrayed the Justifications for Order Guards ........... 19
4.1 A Temporary Crisis Emerges ..................................................................................................................... 19
4.1.1 Cause for Concern ............................................................................................................................. 21
4.2 Reconsidering the Nature of the Crisis ...................................................................................................... 22
4.2.1 Governing the Crisis .......................................................................................................................... 27
4.3 Summary .................................................................................................................................................... 30
6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 33
6.1 Democratic Accountability ........................................................................................................................ 34
6.2 Further Research ........................................................................................................................................ 34
References ............................................................................................................................................ 36
Attachments ......................................................................................................................................... 43
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
"Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real
change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken
depend on the ideas that are lying around."
-Milton Friedman
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1 Extended Arm of the Law
The legitimate use of physical force is what defines a state. That is Max Weber’s (1946, 77)
answer to his famously asked question “what is a 'state'?”. The conventional view of what
defines a modern state could, however, be questioned in the era of late modern policing with
its new ways of understanding policing (Johnston 2000, 76). In this late modern thinking,
division of labour has found its way into the legitimate use of force resulting in a fragmentation
of policing.
The Weberian definition could even further be questioned when describing the
witnessed development in Sweden the past decades. Besides the regular police co-exist security
guards (väktare) and order guards (ordningsvakter) (Munck 2005, 14). The authority given to
security guards are restricted and at its maximum limited to citizen's arrest; just as regular
citizens are given. However, order guards are a peculiar hybrid of security guards and police.
They are a non-state and generally privately employed policing agent that infringes on the
monopoly of violence; who has the authority to reject, remove, apprehend, and to use violence
if its deemed necessary (Munck 2005, 38–41). A significant authority given after only two
weeks of training (in comparison with the regular police whom are trained for two and a half
years).
Only two countries inside the European union – Sweden and Finland – have
systems of privately employed security personnel that has the authority to partly act as police
(Guwallius 2017, 82–89).1 Albeit based on outdated data, de Waard’s (1999) comparison of
the private security sphere throughout Europe reveals the extent of the Swedish private security
industry, in further international perspective. “A remarkable finding is the high number of
private security personnel per 100,000 inhabitants in Northern Europe. It appears that Great
Britain, Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Sweden are the leaders in the field of the private
security industry” (Waard 1999, 154). The author also notes that although Sweden has fewer
police officers per capita, than EU countries on average, the number of private security
personnel was above the EU average (Waard 1999, 156) which makes the Swedish case an
interesting object to analyse. In 2013 a trade association (Säkerhetsbranschen) formed for
private security companies in Sweden, who compiles and publishes data about its affiliates.
The trade association represents, as of 2018, 150 companies who have collectively 28 000 co-
1 This claim is further corroborated in an official policy document published by the Department of Justice (Ds
2003:50, 67–68).
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workers and an annual turnover of 22 billion (Säkerhetsbranschen 2018). The scale of the
Swedish private security industry becomes clearer when put into juxtaposition with the
Swedish police organization and its 29 500 employees (including approximately 20 000 police
officers in service) and a budget of just below 29 billion (Polisen 2017, 56 & 85). The trade
association does, however, only represent approximately half of all authorized security
companies (out of 300 companies in total) in Sweden (Rikspolisstyrelsen 2012, 11). Guwallius
(2017, 80–81) estimates that the amount of operating order guards in Sweden has fluctuated
between 9 000 and 10 000 during 2004-2017.2
Order guards have however not always been an entrenched commercial policing
agency. The modern system of non-state agents given policing authority has its roots in the
formalisation of the first Swedish police law in 1925 (Munck 2005, 15–17). Police could,
according to the law, assign individuals to temporarily become order men (ordningsmän) with
police authority to supervise smaller and temporary events. Distinguishing the police from
order men was initially somewhat difficult and it remained ambiguous up until 1965, when the
police became nationalized (from previously being municipally controlled) and the publishing
of The police instructions. It declared that the police could give civilians the right to perform
order maintenance. Although the purpose with the instruction was to clarify the role of order
guards, some confusion remained as to when and where order guards could operate. This
caused the first governmental report (published 1978) into the use of order guards; a document
that led to the 1981 Order Guard Code.3 The 60’s saw also the first baby steps of what has
evolved into the contemporary private security industry; security companies
(bevakningsföretag) that specialises in providing security solutions such as order guards.
It is evident that the order guards as an institute has evolved into something far
from the simple and temporary function that it once was. How and why this development has
occurred is somewhat unclear. This obscureness is not unique for Sweden. When going through
the literature on the private security industry several scholars, regardless of geographical
context, describes difficulties with gathering and interpreting information about the industry
and its policing agencies (South 1988, 23; Jones and Newburn 2006, 22, 40 & 72; Wakefield
2012, 64) and this is also true for the limited literature covering order guards in Sweden
(Guwallius 2017, 80).
2 The author had to call every police region in Sweden to gather the estimated number which shows how difficult
it is to extract a detailed view of the industry (Guwallius 2017, 80 & 263). 3 Lag (1980:578) om ordningsvakter
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The scholarly interest in the fragmented policing landscape emerged in the 70’s
and is now an extensive theory that tries to explain different aspects of pluralisation (Shearing
and Stenning 1981, 1983; Loader 2000). Jones and Newburn (1998, 97) have argued that the
literature on Plural policing, as the theory has mainly come to be named, have developed into
two categories, each providing different components and explanations. A fiscal constraint
perspective, that explains pluralisation as a consequent of multiple constraints aimed at the
state which it can’t withstand without the aid of the private sector, and a structuralist
perspective that instead tries to argue that pluralisation has occurred because of the
commercialisation of the public space (i.e. shopping centres and sports arenas) which requires
private policing to ensure the safety of its customers.
Present study will approach the development of pluralisation and marketization
of policing in Sweden by analysing the State’s Official Reports (SOU) published between the
1970’s and 2018. These reports are regulatory policy documents which often are the initial step
in the legislative process in Sweden and contains rich descriptions of various issues (Bäck
2015, 184–88). This study will highlight and analyse how a series of SOU’s have portrayed the
use of order guards in Sweden and how their increased presence has been rationalised by the
authors. The sampling process of the documents starts the decade when, as previously
mentioned, the Department of Justices ordered the first SOU dedicated to investigating the use
and demand for order guards in Sweden. These documents will be processed through the
method of document analysis. A method intended to bring forward and underline explicit and
hidden meaning within documents (Bowen 2009, 27–28). By doing so, the justifications and
practice of order guards thus becomes crystallised and accessible for further analysis. The
aspired implications for this study is twofold: to extend the theory of plural policing by
exploring mechanisms observed in the Swedish context, which might be overlooked in the
current literature, but beyond that the study also aims to provide a basis for further discussion
about the Swedish welfare society and what its citizens might and should expect from it.
1.1 Targeting the Research Problem
The research problem for this study derives from Stenning and Shearing’s (1979) article The
Quiet revolution. The authors describe how the creeping expansion of the private security
sphere could be seen as a silent revolution that has transformed how social control is maintained
under the contemporary era of private solutions. Within this hidden revolution, new and private
agents have taken over significant parts of administering and policing the public; functions that
has long been executed by the public sphere. The described revolution could also be seen in
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Sweden which has one of the most widespread private security spheres in Europe (Waard 1999,
154). Thorough discussion about shifts in public policing has been somewhat absent because
of the quiet ‘marketization’ of social control. How this revolution has been discursively
motivated to politicians and the public is therefore crucial to highlight. The overall knowledge
how market solutions are being pushed forward is also significant in a larger political
perspective when comprehending general privatization mechanisms in society.
1.2 Purpose & Research Question
The aim of this study is to highlight how the justification and demand of order guards in
Sweden has been portrayed in the State’s Official Reports (SOU) between the 1970’s and 2018.
The reports will be document-analysed drawing on the theoretical framework of plural policing
which describes the political and social processes behind the evolvement of a fragmented
public policing landscape. This study aspires to answer the following research question: How
is the practice of order guards justified in Sweden between the 1970’s and 2018?
1.3 Delimitation
This study will be delimited to three intertwined aspects: i) order guards, ii) portrayed in State’s
Official Reports (SOU), iii) between the 1970’s and 2018. These three key conditions each
excluded some aspects that are worth highlighting before continuing. Firstly, security guards
(väktare) and other security personnel are excluded from this study because they don’t possess
the same policing and violence authority (e.g. doesn’t challenge the states monopoly of
violence) as order guards do. Secondly, this study excludes other governmental reports (i.e.
departementsserien4) and other documents that follows in the legislative process (i.e. referrals
or proposed acts/bills). Lastly, SOU’s published before the 70’s are not included in the
sampling process. This is because the 70’s were the decade when Swedish Department of
Justice for the first time ordered an investigation into the need and use of order guards in
Sweden.
4 Departementsserien is a similar report as SOU’s but with the difference that departementsserien are an internal
report for the Swedish Ministry.
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2 Theoretical Departure & Literature Review
The following theory and literature overview will be branched into three separate sections. The
first section identifies and defines essential concepts that are relevant to the theory of plural
policing. The second part covers theoretical explanations why policing has fragmented,
according to the theory, into different policing agencies. The third section is dedicated to
general research on order guards in Sweden. This part of the literature review is meant to
facilitate an understanding where current study will positioning itself in relation to the Swedish
literature that discusses order guards.
2.1 Relevant Concepts & Definitions
2.1.1 What Constitutes Policing?
To understand the development of a private security sphere, that increasingly acquires policing
functions from the public sphere, one must understand the terminology of policing. One of the
main criticisms, within the sociology of policing, is the ongoing tendency “to conflate policing
(a social function) with police (a specific body of personnel)” (Johnston 1999, 176–77). This
limited focus leads to a fixation with the function and role of the state police while excluding
other bodies engaged in policing activities. An often-cited definition, which shifts focus to a
core sets of policing activities, is that of Jones and Newburn’s (1998):
“...[T]hose organised forms of order-maintenance, peacekeeping, rule or law
enforcement, crime investigation and prevention and other forms of investigation
and associated information-brokering – which may involve a conscious exercise of
coercive power – undertaken by individuals or organisations, where such activities
are viewed by them and/or others as a central or key defining part of their purpose.”
(1998, 17–18)
While above definition is somewhat satisfying, since it includes both private and public actors,
it lacks a crucial aspect that has evolved with the rise of modern private security industry: the
growing collaboration between private and public actors in governing the public. Kemp et al.
(1999, 199) describes it as “a complex of interlaced systems of agencies which work together
to produce order”. The blurred borders, that has emerged in the last decades, between private
and public policing, is a crucial feature in the contemporary private security industry and will
be thoroughly discussed in the analysis of this study.
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2.1.2 Defining the Private Security Industry
Just as the definition of policing is widely debated, so is the definition of the private security
sphere. One definition draws a distinction between the private security industry and the private
security sector. South (1988, 23–27) describes notably in his book, Policing for profit, how the
private security industry consists of companies that provide guarding services along with
providing security equipment (e.g. closed-circuit television, metal detector, et cetera). The
private security sector, on the other hand, includes security consultants, in-house security and
private investigators. What separates these two entities is mainly that the industry has a focus
on policing the public which the sector does not have. Another definition merges the industry
and the sector into one wide definition (George and Button 2000, 15; Jones and Newburn 1998,
55; Shearing and Stenning 1981, 194–98).5 In their article, Modern private security, Shearing
and Stenning (1981) uses the term private security as the merged definition.6 However, this
study will use Souths’ narrow definition: private security industry. The core activity of the
private security industry is the various means of policing of the public and this study has a
predominantly focus on (private) policing, done by order guards.
2.1.3 Order Guards
The fundamental duty of order guards is according to 1 § Order guard law (1980:578)7 to “assist
in maintaining public order”. This legal definition is written with the consideration of what the
main duty of regular police officers are according to 1 § Police law (1984:387)8: “to maintain
public order”. In essence, order guards are deployed to aid in preserving public order in public
places.9 This is further specified in 2 § Order guard law (1980:578), which describes that order
guards may serve at i) general gatherings, ii) public events, iii) bathing and camping sites or
sports grounds for which the public has access, and iiii) premises where alcohol is served to
the public (for further definition of general gatherings and public events see Munch 2005, 27-
28).
5 It should be noted that while some scholars might agree that there should be a joint definition of the private
security industry and sector, the reasons for this varies widely. One argument for a joint definition is that it
manages to include the large grey area in the two entities margins, which otherwise might be lost when
fragmenting the definition while another argument for a joint definition is that the main purpose of portraying
private security is to contrast it against the public criminal justice system, which a collective definition promotes
(George and Button 2000). 6 The authors introduced the term “private security” also as a response to scholars who use the misleading term
“private police”. A term that implies governmental control and authority which, according to the authors, private
actors lack (Shearing, Farnell, and Stenning 1980, 17). 7 Lag (1980:578) om ordningsvakter 8 Polislag (1984:387) 9 There are exceptions to the rule that the geographical area must be public (see Munck 2005, 29-31).
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2.1.4 Plural Policing
Plural (or pluralisation/fragmentation of) policing refers the increasing involvement of
commercial or other types of non-state agencies in policing (Button 2002, 23). Criminologists
started to give plural policing attention in the late 70’s and a bulk of the early research centred
on highlighting historical shifts in social control that lead to new actors to emerge (Kempa et
al. 1999, 199–2003; Jones and Newburn 2006, 1–4). Jones and Newburn (1998, 97) argues that
the literature describing the rise of private policing could be divided into two categories
depending on their description of the pluralisation: fiscal constraint perspective and a
structuralist perspective. Extended depictions of these perspectives will be presented below,
and present study will try to contrast these two approaches of plural policing against the
Swedish context.
2.2 Making Sense of Plural Policing: Theoretical Framework
Below is a brief theory and literature description of the two different approaches to plural
policing. A figure (figure 1) is inserted in the end of 2.2.2 with the purpose of demonstrating
how different mechanisms, in accordance to the theory, impacts the prevalence of private
policing. This section will end with a brief criticism against the theory that relevant for this
study.
2.2.1 Public Fiscal Constraints
The fiscal constraint explanation describes plural policing as an inevitable consequence of the
increasing demands placed on the public sphere – including the police (Button 2002, 29–31;
Jones and Newburn 1998, 98–102; Shearing 1992, 406–8). This has created a vacuum that
subsequently has been filled by private security solutions. These constraints and demands are
reflected in descriptions of a police force who has trouble withstanding increasing crime, being
understaffed or general trouble keeping up with modern societies demands (this mechanism
has a dedicated component in figure 1). Hence, the states install supplementary policing agents
to assist in social control, while still maintaining a low fiscal expenditure. This perspective has
faced some criticism for not being in line with real fiscal trends. Most European countries has
had increasing private security industries and simultaneously a staffing and police budget
growth (Jones and Newburn 1999; Steden and Jones 2010, 227–29). However, fiscal constraint
perspective will be used in a narrative manner in this study by trying to extinguish possibly
references the authors of the SOU’s make to fiscal, constraint and demand issues. The
operationalisation is done by highlighting discursive elements of police crisis, in the analysed
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material, described as constraints in expenditure or by increasing crime rates that the police
need complementary assistants to combat (se figure 1 for mechanisms).
Johnston (1991, 23–24) has characterized the processes of relinquishing police
duties onto new policing agents (both state and none-state) as demand shedding and could be
seen as an outcome of the fiscal crisis that were discussed above (see figure 1 for process). By
shedding funding and services to the none-state sector, the police organisation ease some of
the alleged pressure experienced by them.10 This process has had impact on the police
organisation in Great Britain with the introduction of the extended police family; a wide array
of different actors and organisations, working together but with different public safety roles,
such as auxiliary and voluntary policing, security guards and stewards, and neighbourhood
warden programs (A. Crawford and Lister 2004; Johnston 2003, 198). Similar processes are
also witnessed in different parts of Europe (Jones and Newburn 2006; Steden and Jones 2010)
including Sweden which has, for example, an extensive volunteer sector (Hörnqvist 2001),
private investigators policing fraud claims (Flyghed 2014, 137–40; Stenström 2017b, 2017a),
private CCTV operators (Svenonius 2012), private military security (Berndtsson and Stern
2013) and miscellaneous security personnel (Berndtsson and Stern 2011).
In his article, Plural Policing and Democratic Governance, Loader (2000, 327)
states that although significant parts of policing are now done by non-government actors, the
government still poses the ability to control these actors in a process called policing through
government. "The most established form that this take is government agencies purchasing from
the security market staffed services and hardware for the protection of premises [...]" (Loader
2000, 327). Thus, clear instances occur where the government administers (steers) the
operation, but private agents executes the operation (rowing) (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992).
2.2.2 Mass Private Property
One of the earliest structuralist explanation (and to date a common explanation) to why the
pluralisation of policing occurred centres around shifts in ‘property relations’; land previously
owned by the public that increasingly became owned by corporations. Shearing and Stenning
(1981, 226–29) introduced the concept of mass private properties: Commercially owned
property which are open to the public but for commercial use (i.e. shopping malls, sport
10 This process has also been described by Garland (1996, 452–55) in a similar fashion. He discusses how the
government acknowledge its limited capacity, to combat and prevent delinquency, by enacting a
responsibilisation strategy that delegates traditional state responsibilities to private citizens and other non-state
agents.
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stadiums, large enclosed residential complexes) resulting in fundamental changes in where
people spend their leisure time but also the requirement of permanent spatial policing.11 Thus
arose the demand for private security that could ensure the safety for costumers and business
owners alike.12 Changes in ‘property relations’ and commercialisation of consumption patterns
are two mechanism pinned in figure 1 that leads to the emergence of ‘mass private properties’
(which in turn increases the demand for private policing). It should, although, be noted that the
theory has been criticized for making broad assumptions on basic correlation (which should
not be confused with causation) between increases in ‘mass private properties’ and increases
in private security (Jones and Newburn 1998, 106–10, 1999, 232).13 Massive increases in
private policing and an expanding private security industry is a phenomenon witnessed in
several continents, regardless of the presence of ‘mass private properties’. The concept of ‘mass
private property’ will be operationalised in this study by highlighting discussions, made by the
authors of the SOU’s, that includes policing of shopping malls, sports arenas and other large-
scale commercial properties.
The ‘mass private property’ perspective highlighted, nevertheless, a shift in social
control: preventive policing (in affluent areas). Scholars has described the precursor to
preventive policing as reactive (or curative) policing which is social control executed when
crime has occurred (Slansky 2006, 97–101; Philip Stenning and Shearing 1979, 231–33).
Preventive policing is characterised as a more latent social control focused on deterrence. It is
meant to prevent loss or destruction of private property. The fact that preventive policing is
mainly done on commercial ground, where resourceful individuals spend more time than
poorer individuals, has been described by Bayley and Shearing (1996) as a disturbing disparity
in policing based on economic background: “The rich will be increasingly policed preventively
by commercial security while the poor will be policed reactively by enforcement-oriented
public police” (Bayley and Shearing 1996, 594).
11 Shearing and Stenning (1982, 1983, 1987) has periodical revised their hypothesis on ‘mass private property’
since they first coined the term, but in the centre, on the rise of private security, still lays in the historical shifts in
property relations within the public and private dichotomy. 12 It has been estimated that the number of privately-owned shopping malls, in the United states in early 50’s, was
about 100, but by 80’s expanded to over 28 000 malls (M. Crawford 2004, 7; Oc and Tiesdell 1997, 12). Crawford
(2004, 8) has described these decades as “the malling of America” which has emanated in radical shifts in social
control. “As a result, North America is experiencing a ‘new feudalism’: huge tracts of property and associated
public spaces are controlled and policed by private corporations” (Shearing and Stenning 1983, 503). 13 Stenning, in an article with other authors (Kempa, Stenning, and Wood 2004, 574–76), has acknowledge that
there are obvious confounding factors in play when explaining the simultaneous increase in ‘mass private
properties’ and private security; more particularly neoliberal shifts in politics and economy affecting both.
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Figure 1. Variables affecting prevalence of private policing. Light grey: variables within structuralist
perspective. Dark grey: variables within fiscal constraint perspective.
2.2.3 Relevant Criticism
Plural policing is a theory that provides clear causal mechanism that are suggested to have
impacted historically the development of private policing agencies. The theory is relevant for
this study because its mechanisms could be extracted and tried against policy documents to see
if there are reflections of them. However, numerous scholars have argued that the theory’s
assumptions are grounded in Anglo-Saxon conditions, resulting in a theory that might have
difficulties to explain a development now witnessed around the globe (Devroe and Terpstra
2015, 235–36; Steden and Jones 2010, 1; van Stokkom and Terpstra 2016, 4). This is a
discussion that doesn’t centre on policing per se but instead the Anglo-Saxon model of
capitalism which is characterized as having the desire to keep the state’s fiscal expenditure low
as well as keeping its public sector slim. It might be notably difficult applying these
explanations in a Swedish context with its Nordic model that includes a much larger welfare
state.14
In relation to this is also the issue of police organisations having different shapes
and capacities depending on origin and how countries are administered. Jones (2006) tries to
pinpoint this disparity in his book, Plural policing – a comparative perspective, by going
14 One might however argue that the Nordic model has in the last couple of decades develop into a much more
diffuse mixed economy that lacks the comprehensive welfare state that once was the beacon of the Nordic model.
Increased Demand Or/And Justification For Private Policing
Emergence Of Mass Private
Properties
Changes In Property Relations Toward Corporate
Ownership
Increased CommercialisationOf Consumption And Leisure
Patterns
Demand Shedding
Public Fiscal Constraints
Increased Demand On The Police
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through a series of countries, covering all continents, and highlighting similarities and
differences. One argument made in the book is how police organisations, by themselves, are
plural depending on systems of governance. Countries with federal (i.e. USA, Canada) or
regionalised unitary states (i.e. France, United Kingdom) tends to have diverse police structures
and regional police units that has different assignments (i.e. paramilitaries, rural police, et
cetera). Having a theory that derives from the Anglo-Saxon policing model includes additional
issues when trying to apply on the Swedish centralised and far fewer plural police organisation;
not all police organisations have the same capacity.
2.3 Order Guards in Sweden
Although order guards have been in use for more than half a decade few studies have been
published that review or analyse order guards in a Swedish context. Published studies point to
a policing agent that does not deter street violence (hot spot policing) (Frogner et al. 2013, 342–
44) but has the capability to increase experienced general safety (to the same level as police
officers do) among civilians (Doyle et al. 2016, 27–28). Documented police reports concerning
assault on order guards (per 100 000 inhabitants) have increased since the 70’s (Wikman,
Estrada, and Nilsson 2010, 27).15 Hansen Löfstrand, Loftus, and Loader (2017) have studied
how private security companies handle media scandals, that includes their order guards,
showing that companies damage control focuses on restoring a general legitimacy as a social
control actor. When narrowing down the literature to research on privatisation of security
Berndtsson and Stern’s (2011) study stands out. The authors analysed how order guards
perceived the marketisation of their work duties in Arlanda airport, which went from public to
private security in 2007 with the outcome that security actors both reproduce and resist the
market logics that effect their work. Although above literature provides well needed
knowledge, it also demonstrates that much of the literature concerns delimited contemporary
issues that doesn’t deliver explanations to how or why order guards has become an essential
agent in Swedish order maintenance. One way in doing so is to identify how policy documents
has portrayed the necessity of order guards.
15 The outcome should be interpreted with caution due to the likeliness of increases in tendency to report
victimisation.
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3 Methodology & Data
This section has the objective to introduce the research design that were selected to answer this
study’s research question. It will initiate with a presentation of the documents analysed in
present study and how these are used in the Swedish legislative processes. The sampling
procedure for selecting which documents to include is then described. This step is then
followed by an introduction to document analysis as a method, followed by the methodological
procedure that were implemented. Next step discusses how current study ensure validity and
reliability. Finally, a section about possible limitations connected to the overall methodology.
3.1 Source of Data
The selected reports to analyse consists of five State’s Official Reports (SOU) and three interim
reports, sampled between the 1970’s and 2018 (see table 2). SOU’s are useful documents to
analyse, and suitable for this study, because of two reasons: Firstly, the documents included in
this study are governmental policy records aimed at policy makers and other individual of
interest. They are produced to shape future policies in a specific field thus having a direct
normative capacity. Secondly, each of these documents discusses thoroughly a delimited issue,
delivering rich data to analyse.
The initial step in the legislative process in Sweden begins generally with the
government (or on rare occasions the parliament) delivering a directive (see table 1 for an
illustration of the legislative process in Sweden).
Table 1. The legislative process in Sweden.
Directive Official Government Report Referrals Governmental Bill Decision in the parliament
The directive includes a request for a committee to investigate a specific topic
(Bäck 2015, 184–88). The committee consists principally of experts, and other people of
interest, who gets formally appointed by the specific ministry who initiated the report. The
committee’s final conclusions are then published in a report called State’s Official Reports
(Statens offentliga utredningar). Interim reports (delbetänkanden) are published, during the
work with the primary SOU, if the investigation is extensive or requires large amount of time.
Significant parts of the interim report are usually integrated into the main SOU but should be
seen as an individual report. The law proposals, included in the SOU’s, are then reviewed
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(referral process) by special advisers and experts. The bill is eventually sent to the parliament
for a vote.
Table 2. Analysed documents.
Title Published Pages16
SOU 1978:3 - Order guards (Ordningsvakter) 1978 269(269)
SOU 1982:64 - Detention in case of fight and intoxication
(Frihetsberövande vid bråk och berusning)
1982 305(5)
SOU 1994:122 - Safety against crime in the community (interim
report) (Trygghet mot brott i lokalsamhället)
1994 253(25)
SOU 1995:146 - Safety against crime (Trygghet mot brott) 1995 301(45)
SOU 2001:87 - For greater concentration (interim report) (Mot ökad
koncentration)
2001 197(13)
SOU 2002:70 - Police activity in change (Polisversamhet i förändring) 2002 381(65)
SOU 2012:23 - Less violence for the money (interim report) (Mindre
våld för pengarna)
2012 340(20)
SOU 2013:19 - More joy for the money (Mer glädje för pengarna) 2013 472(10)
3.2 Sampling
The sampling process initiated with the pooling of 207 SOU’s, published from January 1970
to April 2018, that had included the word “ordningsvakt*”17 at least one time (see table 3 for
sampling process). These documents were fetched from Linköping University Electronic Press,
who provides a search engine for SOU’s.18 The documents were then stratified into subgroups
depending on publishing date: 1970-1979, 1980-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-2009, and 2010-2018.
One document (and its interim report) from each subgroup were then sampled. This was done
by selecting the document which included the word “ordningsvakt*” most frequently.
16 The number inside the parenthesis represents how many pages approximately that the specific report discusses
order guards and topics related to order guards. Note that a discussion about order guards can range from one
paragraph to an entire page. 17 The asterisk is a wildcard character used in search engines for retrieving matching text and succeeding
characters. For example, ordningsvakt* matches any text that includes “ordningsvakt”, such as
ordningsvaktslagen. 18 Linköping University Electronic Press (accessed through www.ep.liu.se/databases/sou) is connected the
Swedish Parliament’s database of SOU’s. It should be noted that the process of obtain correct documents (and not
missing vital documents) is determined on the functionality of the search engine capability of delivering correct
information and to not retrieve erroneous matches. Several searches were done during the process of this study to
see if the search engine fetched the same results and to minimise temporary failures.
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Table 3. Sampling procedure. Total documents; Total documents sub-grouped into decades, number of
documents, total search hits for “ordningsvakt*” in documents; Title of selected documents, number of hits for
“ordningsvakt*”, documents percentage of search hits in relation to sub group hits.
This sampling method has several weaknesses that must be underlined. First and
foremost, sampling eight out of 207 documents entails that large amount of potentially
important data was ignored. This circumstance could challenge the study’s generalizability
because of the possibility that the outcomes of this study could be different, if larger quantities
of documents were included in the study. However, as demonstrated in table 3, the sampled
documents stand (combined) for two-thirds of all the mentions of “ordningsvakt*” throughout
the period 1970-2018 which does give the sampling procedure credibility.
Secondly, sampling documents based on prevalence of search hits doesn’t
guarantee that the individual documents have relevant data to process and present. This was
the case for the documents sampled 1980-1989 and 2010-2018. Despite most search hits, these
documents are rarely included in the analysis giving an explanatory weakness during these time
periods. Purposive sampling (Bryman 2012, 418), as an alternative method, could have
countered this error by providing a more qualitative sampling method, based on purposive and
theoretical relevance to the study. Thus, having the potential to ensure that the sampled
documents includes data that is usable. The applied sampling procedure, in this study, did
however minimise the risk of researcher bias when sampling (Johnston 1997, 283-284) since
the documents were picked through a systematic and uniform process that maintained an
objective relation to the documents throughout the sampling process. Overall, the sampling
method has shown the difficult balancing act between choosing relevant documents versus
ensuring that documents does not get sampled that are, in advanced, known to support the
opinion or theory of the researcher.
1970-2018
207 Documents
1970-197970 Documents
1 951 Hits
Ordningsvakter 1978:33
1 865 Hits96 % Of Total Hits
1980-198921 Documents
135 Hits
Frihetsberövande Vid Bråk Och
Berusning 1982:6465 Hits
48 % Of Total Hits
1990-199929 Documents
879 Hits
Trygghet Mot Brott 1995:146 &
Trygghet Mot Brott I Lokalsamhället
1994:122759 Hits
86 % Of Total Hits
2000-200952 Documents
1 290 Hits
Polisverksamhet I Förändring 2002:70
& Mot Ökad Koncentration
2001:87672 Hits
52 % Of Total Hits
2010-201835 Documents
405 Hits
Mer Glädje För Pengarna 2013:19 & Mindre Våld För Pengarna 2012:23
175 Hits43 % Of Total Hits
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The third weakness is that sampling documents by prevalence of specific word is
dependent whether the documents has searchable text. SOU’s published from 2000 and onward
are all digitally published and thus automatically searchable. However, documents published
1999 and before have all been digitally scanned (from its physical book form), by the National
library of Sweden, and then translated into machine-encoded text which is searchable, through
a technique called optical character reader (OCR). Applying OCR on scanned document is the
most efficient way of translating from images of text, to machine-encoded text but there is a
possibility of technical problems leading to occasional words not being translated, leading them
to not be searchable and thereby giving misleading search hits (Linköpings universitet 2018).
3.3 Analytic Strategy
The documents included in this study are processed through the method of document analysis,
which is a systematic qualitative research procedure, presented by Bowen (2009, 27–28) for
reviewing and bringing forward underlying meaning in documents that are expressed both
explicit and latent. Document analysis as a method is done by a process between exanimating
and interpreting the documents in question. It combines elements from content analysis and
thematic analysis; generating an empirical knowledge and understanding of the context that
the data derives from. The method’s dependency on interpretations of text and its meaning,
derives from its hermeneutic research tradition (Ödman 2007). The core of the procedure is a
continual interplay between the understanding of the individual parts of the text and the overall
impression of the material producing an awareness for a giving phenomenon. Document
analysis was for present study a useful methodological approach because the nature of the
documents; data rich policy documents. Bowen (2009) argues that these types of documents
are ideal for a document analysis. Coffey, Atkinson, & Omarzu (1997, 47) describes,
furthermore, documents with the Durkheimian terminology social facts giving it a distinctive
ontological status in that they form a separate reality “which are produced, shared, and used in
socially organized ways”.
3.4 Procedure
Bowen (2009, 32–34) describes the procedure when doing a document analysis in three steps,
leading to the final empirical outcome. The first step consists of an initial superficial reading
of the material with the intention to receive a holistic sense of the material. This step gives the
researcher an understanding of the language used in the documents and facilitates the
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forthcoming steps. This first step brought also forward the first manifestations of the theoretical
concepts within plural policing that were contrastable to the data. The material was read, during
this initial step, in its physical book form adding a deeper sense of the width of the material
which digital formats don’t manage to extract in the same sense.
The second step in the process consisted of numerous rereading and an initial
breakdown of the material. Essential parts of the data were highlighted and extracted for further
analysis. The documents were, during this stage, imported into Nvivo (12 Pro) which is a
computer software intended for qualitative data analysis. Nvivo facilitated in the overall
analysis process by presenting a comprehendible overview of the material making it easier to
browse through codes and categories. The second step also initiated the code and categorisation
construction that were based on the theoretical framework and the data’s characteristics. The
previously exported sections were first coded line by line with broad codes and initial ideas
connected to plural policing (see attachment 01 for complete code schedule). Each of these
coded segments had commentary reflections assisting in the forthcoming synthesising of codes
(see table 4a).
Tabell 4a. Initial coding
Data Code Meaning Reflections
The police are currently carrying out
a great load of tasks that the
investigation considers that, with
retained quality and legal certainty,
could be transfer to another actor. In
addition, there is the opportunity to
create a more financial solution if
certain tasks are taken over by
another actor. (SOU 2002:70)
Increased
Demand
The police have taken on too
much duties which has put a
constraint on the police. The
authors recommend shedding
some of the police’s demand.
The emphasize on a
financial solution
could demonstrates
how public
expenditure are being
closely monitored.
Third step begun refining the codes into thematic categories, based on stable
patterns that emerged from the data (see table 4b for example). Categorisation and clustering
of codes is described by Bowen (2009) as a crucial stage of document analysis. This step of the
process filters out codes that are deemed as irrelevant and sorts residual codes into thematic
categories. The themes used in this study were constraints perspective, structural perspective,
alternative perspectives (covering alternative explanations) and each theme had various
subcategories.
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Tabell 4b. Thematic categorisation
Data Code Category Subcategory
The police are currently carrying out a great load
of tasks that the investigation considers that, with
retained quality and legal certainty, could be
transfer to another actor. In addition, there is the
opportunity to create a more financial solution if
certain tasks are taken over by another actor. (SOU
2002:70)
Increased
Demand
Constraint
Perspective
Demand Shedding
3.5 Validity & Reliability
There are multiple aspects of this study’s selected data and method that are considered with the
intention of ensuring the study’s validity and reliability. Firstly, the selected data for this study
(documents) lacks reactivity (Bowen 2009, 31). Documents are unaffected by the research
process that might is otherwise be the case found in qualitative methods that requires social
interaction. 19 In combination with the fact that SOU’s are public documents accessible by
everyone increases the replicability; other researcher are able to revisit and reprocess the
documents. Secondly, by carefully going through a systematic process of coding and theme
construction, presented by the method of document analysis, the data process ensures being
conducted properly. A key step in this process, that ensures validity, is to develop and use a
code schedule that systematises the coding procedure (Potter and Levine‐Donnerstein 1999,
266–68). Thirdly, providing an insight into the analysis process could also increase a study’s
reliability (Graneheim and Lundman 2004). By presenting the applied code schedule, the code
and thematic table (table 4a and 4b) and by inserting extensive quotes in the analysis chapter
the reader is provided with the ability to determine and judge the validity of the analysis and
interpretation processes.
3.6 Methodological Constraints
Although the data and methodology are well considered they do convey limitations and
constraints important to highlight. Although the sampled documents have the potential to
answer the research question, the outcomes of this study only reflect the rationalities and
descriptions embodied in these documents. This study cannot describe conditions outside the
documents. There have most certainly been numerous actors involved and contributing to the
development of private policing. As previously mentioned, these documents are however
19 Bowen (2009, 31) goes to the extent to claim that this reduces the researchers required reflexivity. While it
might be true that documents do not alter when observed, reflexivity is still an issue that needs to be underlined
when interpreting and constructing meaning.
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policy documents intended to influence policymakers and thus having a normative impact
outside the documents itself. However, this also connects to the second limitation of this study.
Not all SOU’s are translated into actual policies meaning that although a report might push for
a specific development, it might not be an actual process that will be fulfilled. The implications
for this study could however be used to depart into further research how recommendations have
been received by policy makers. Lastly, regarding the issue of constraint in language. SOU’s
are published in Swedish, but the selected quotes are presented in English which means that
they have been translated and a translation processes always risks altering the original authors
meaning. Quotes have however been translated as close as possible to their true and original
phrasing.20
20 Additional words have been inserted to the quotes with the intent to clarify significance. These are put into
brackets to accentuate when used.
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4 How Swedish Policy Documents Have Portrayed the
Justifications for Order Guards
This chapter unfolds the analysis of the sampled material in this study. The analysed
development is portioned into two subchapters, each having one additional subchapter. The
initial chapter covers the documents published in the 70’s and the 80’s and discusses the
emergence of a crisis and its described antidote. Second chapter describes the documents
published in the 90’s and onwards, and the changes in the perceived crisis, from temporary to
a long-lasting crisis. A summary of the analysis is provided lastly.
4.1 A Temporary Crisis Emerges
The former head of Department of Justice, Lennart Geijer, describes in the directive that
prefaces the 1978 report (SOU 1978:33) the uncertainty that has increasingly been associated
with the role of order guards. Geijer does so by describing the definition of an order guard and
then how this definition has come to deviate from how these policing agents are used. The
definition was, as previously described in the background chapter, during the 70’s and earlier
someone who i) were assigned to temporarily police the public, on public events, but ii) were
not an employee of the police (SOU 1978:33, 47). Gejier describes further how the “assigning
of order guards has not only been done for public events but also for a variety of other shifting
tasks of shifting nature” (SOU 1978:33, 48). This ambiguity made Geijer to order an
investigation into how order guards are being used and the general need of a system that
imposes policing authorities on non-police actors.
The authors, who were assigned by Geijer and his department, for the 1978 report
portrays, throughout the document, a police organisation in latent crisis having to fight an uphill
battle with several unfavourable circumstances. These circumstances are described in tandem
with what had become the temporary solution: order guards.
It is our fundamental idea that public order and safety must be maintained by police
officers, trained for this purpose. However, reality has shown to be different and for
different reasons. Some of these reasons are the lack of police officers, the rising
crime rate, and the need for increased surveillance in public and so-called quasi-
public places. However, we believe that society in whole must try to achieve the
goal of public order and safety trough properly trained police officers. However,
before this happens, order guards must however be hired to a limited extent (SOU
1978:33, 97).
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Above quote indicates that the rise of non-state agents of policing in Sweden has
similarities with the occurrence of corresponding policing agents in other western nations.
Several scholars on plural policing has stressed that increasing crime rates, understaffed police
organisations and increased demand on policing services are all three imperative justifications
used by those who argue that the state is unable to stand on its own legs and in need of
additional non-state policing agent (Loader 1997, 145–46; Spitzer and Scull 1977, 598–99;
Steden and Jones 2010, 5). As previously described, these are justifications that are primarily
tapping into the discussions concerning fiscal constraints on the public sphere.
One of the aspects that the authors, of the SOU, underlines as a possible
explanation into why the police organisation has issued order guards are the emergence of
‘quasi-public places’. While these places cannot directly be translated into an issue of property
relations and the phenomena of ‘mass private properties’, some similarities occur. The authors
of the report describe how the largest security company in Sweden, at that time, ABAB21 has
“increasingly received requests to police department stores, shopping malls and city centres
where order maintenance is the primary essential task” (SOU 1978:33, 93). Another security
company is likewise described having an increase in order maintenance in “public or quasi-
public places such as department stores and supermarkets, where problems are often
encountered in terms of drunken disorder and general disturbance" (SOU 1978:33, 94). These
quotes do underline that ‘mass private properties’ could have a part in explaining the rise of
order guards in Sweden. ‘Mass private property’ as a concept has been criticised for delivering
a compelling theory but without any meaningful empirical substance outside the United States
(Jones and Newburn 1998, 117; Steden and Jones 2010, 6–7). If this is also the case in Sweden
is difficult to determine based on the limited material included in SOU 1978:33 but it safe to
say that the elements of ‘mass private properties’ are initially reflected. However, other
variables are discussed more frequently by the authors of the report; rising delinquency, the
overall lack of officers and increased policing of minor public events (i.e. restaurants and
discotheques) are the general theme, described by the authors, to why order guards need to be
temporary installed. The case of accelerating crime rates and the changes in policing is an issue
that is further discussed by the authors.
21 ABAB (Allmänna bevakningsaktiebolaget) was a state-owned security company that provide order guards and
other security services. It was formed 1964 after a parliamentary decision but was one of many publicly owned
companies that became privately owned during the privatisation wave that swept over Sweden during the 90’s
(Munck 2005).
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It can be argued that the numerous public disorders that have recently caused
concern to the public are due to an increase and widening of alcohol abuse,
especially among young people; a problem which needs to be resolved by means
other than increased policing efforts, which can only temporarily solve an
emergency situation. However, society must continue to rely on the good work from
order guards to maintain order in certain limited areas. It is urgent that the
organizers [of public events], together with the police authority and order guards,
seek to resolve the systemic problems, for example through crime prevention efforts
(SOU 1978:33, 99).
Crime in Sweden did indeed rise, from 2 500 annual prosecutions per 100 000
inhabitants, in early 50’s, to more than 6 000 annual prosecutions per 100 000 inhabitants in
mid-70’s, and research by Von Hofer (2011, 149–50) has shown that drunken disorder (and
traffic crime) explains almost the entire increase in crime rates.
The concept of ‘crime prevention efforts’, that the authors use in above quote, is
interesting because its predominantly used when discussing policing done by order guards
rather than by the police. This echoes to some extent the development in social control that
Shearing and Stenning (1979, 231–33) notes. They discuss, as previously mentioned, that order
guards are deployed mainly for preventive policing while the police are used reactively (‘in
case of fire’).
4.1.1 Cause for Concern
SOU Ordningsvakter 1978:33 stands out in its ambivalent view on order guards when in
comparison to the other documents included in this study. Several explicit concerns are
highlighted, by the authors, throughout the document when simultaneously recommending a
further (but temporary) pluralisation of policing.
The contemporary system with order guards, with its current content and use, is an
obsolete instrument that does not meet the requirements that citizens have the right
to demand. Order guards have been used as compensation for police officers in
situations that were not foreseen once the system was introduced (SOU 1978:33,
98).
The development that is the most concerning for the authors is the sharp increase
of private security companies. It is worth recalling that order guards are not necessarily the
equivalent of formal policing operated by private security companies. As previously described,
the system of order guards has historic roots in Sweden and was the simple function of civilians
who ever temporary given policing authority to police a specific public event (Munck 2005,
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15–17); a semiformal social controlling agent that, as time went on, became a deeply
formalised and private policing agent.
Our opinion is that order guards should not be provided by security companies. [...].
Public order and security must be maintained by the police. [....]. However, due to
the lack of police officers, a system of order guards with limited policing duties
must be provided for a period, mainly for public events. Allowing security
companies to carry out surveillance activities could easily lead to the emergence of
a reserve police corps. Such development cannot be accepted [...] (SOU 1978:33,
14).
The risk of order guards to be perceived or developing into a reserve or private
police is underlined multiple times in SOU 1978:33. Modern day order guards have uniform
clothing that has similarities with the uniform worn by the police (Munck 2005) - something
that the 1978 authors were critical of. "[...] [A]n unified uniform would lead to an increased
risk that public might perceive order guards as a reserve police with wider authority powers
and qualifications than they have in reality” (SOU 1978:33, 150).
Policing on commercial areas (which is regular procedure in present time) is
further discouraged by the authors of the 1978 report. “Order guards should not be operating
on quasi-public grounds, such as market places and squares. Neither should order guards
operate in residential areas” (SOU 1978:33, 14). These formulations, by the authors, reflect to
some degree their hesitancy in recommending further use of order guards. They criticise the
witnessed development while they cannot discourage the practice of order guards due to
previously described circumstances.
4.2 Reconsidering the Nature of the Crisis
The analysed document published in the 90’s, SOU 1995:146 and its interim report SOU
1994:122, marks a sharp discursive shift when arguing for the demand of order guards and
changes in policing in general. The decade when these documents were published are worth
dissecting further because Sweden (and large parts of the West) underwent large structural and
political changes during this time (and previous decades leading up to the 90’s) that could
decipher some of the observed developments. Tham (2001, 414) has argued that the 90’s is the
decade when crime policy in Sweden became politicised in a way that previous decades had
not witnessed. Law and order became a viable tool for politicians to use; hand in hand with
alarmism as rhetoric fuel. The 90’s were further a decade marked by privatisation and
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deregulation of a wide array of public institutes – and functions including policing; in part due
to recession and a general policy shift towards neoliberalism.
Criminal policy has to date expressed an attitude that individual agents, who
through their actions, take measures to protect themselves against crime, are
infringing on an area that, in principle, should be limited to the state. This is
especially obvious when discussing surveillance services. It is the opinion of this
report that the time has come to abandon this idea. One cannot count merely on the
state’s law enforcement agencies abilities to prevent or combat crime without the
help of external aid - not even in a foreseeable future (SOU 1995:146, 17).
Above revised stance on who has the authority (and responsibility) to police the
public is moreover a departure from previous reports attitude that described how order guards
could, if not regulated enough, risk becoming a reserve or private police. The 1995 authors
points to previous concerns and explicitly calls them farfetched.
From the basic point of view, one can understand the statements made at the time
of the current legislation. At the same time, in the light of the development that has
taken place, the concerns about the emergence of what are referred to as private
police seem somewhat exaggerated (SOU 1995:146, 144).
Gone are previous decades warnings of what an uncontrolled non-state policing
agent might develop into. Although the 1978 report didn’t discourage the use of order guards
(due to the lack of police officers, an increase in delinquency and a general higher demand on
the police) its authors recommended restrictions that were somewhat adopted into law that,
however, turned out to have unexpected consequences for policing capabilities in Sweden.
“Restrictions in the law [that regulates order guards] led to the number of order guards dropping
sharply. As far as we have been able to find, this reduction has not been fully compensated by
increased activity by the ordinary police” (SOU 1994:122, 199). SOU 1995:146 describes
further that: "The legislator's intention were obviously that the police would, to a significant
extent take over policing duties that were no longer managed by order guards" (SOU 1995:146,
148). The demand on the police thus continued and the temporary crisis persisted and morphed
into a permanent.
A sense of fatigue is further portrayed in the documents which further emphasises
the need of order guards. “The police service appears in many parts be unacceptably low. [...]
To solve this problem by recruiting new police officers is an impossible solution, partly because
of economic reasons” (SOU 1995:146, 146). The authors explicit recommends shedding the
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demands onto private companies and individuals in a paragraph further in the document: “The
police are unable to always provide service to the extent that corresponds to the needs of today's
society. This means that it comes to the public, both individuals and companies - to themselves,
in part, arrange protection [...]” (SOU 1995:146, 169).
There are, however, alterations in the described strain experienced the police
organisation. As previously mentioned, one of the main pressures on the police was the high
crime rate. This component is absent in both SOU 1995:146 and its interim report SOU
1994:122. Instead, a new circumstance is stressed frequently: the geographical complex nature
of Sweden. Rural parts of Sweden are difficult to police and will be so, predicts the authors,
for an unforeseeable future. “Crime itself is not high in these [rural] areas. The problem is
instead that when the police is needed, for example to intervene in ongoing crime or disturbance
or to provide service to the public, help takes unreasonably long time to arrive” (SOU
1995:146, 135). The vacuum created by the absence of police presence should be solved,
according to the authors, by adapting a ‘policing model’ that incorporates order guards in a
much higher degree.22 "The model that has been proposed makes it possible to deploy order
guards to perform certain policing in central parts of communities in sparsely populated areas"
(SOU 1995:146, 162). Setting up order guards to police larger areas, such as community or city
centres, deviates likewise from the pre-90’s documents who instead predicted risks in giving
long-lasting authority to none-police actors to maintain order in larger areas.
Insufficient police officers are a motive that is, in part, furthermore described in
the documents published in the 90’s. A noteworthy detail is that the police deficiency this time
is in part a deliberate outcome. The police model emphasises a geographical redistribution of
police officers based on crime levels.
This [model] consists of allocating police resources where policing is needed, based
on crime levels and etcetera. The distribution model leads to an anticipated decline
in police resources in rural areas. It should be emphasized that the situation today
is that there are, in many parts, higher police density in rural areas than in many
other areas if police density is measured in relation to the number of reported crimes
(SOU 1994:122, 201).
22 It should be noted that ‘rural policing’ is not an isolated issue in Sweden but something that concerns several
countries and has been handled in various ways. One example that reoccurs in the literature that discusses rural
policing is France and its National Gendarmerie who has the task to police smaller towns and rural areas (Mawby
2016, 45–56). For further discussion on how rural policing has impacted French private policing see Jones and
Newburn (2006, 55–75).
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Redistributing officers according to above model is predicted to result in a decline
of police officers in rural areas which in turn creates a policing vacuum. The prescribed cure
for combating this vacuum is, as mentioned numerous times, by increasing the presence of
order guards but this time organised and maintained by a model that has striking similarities
with the concept of ‘extended police family’ that is mainly adopted in Great Britain. The
extended family refers to governance by fragmentating policing, but with the police as the
dominant and organizational figures; surrounded by several state and non-state policing agents
circulating next to the police organisation (Johnston 2003, 198–99)
We want to emphasize that order guards will be tied closer to the police organisation
according to our model. It is not a question of order guards working completely
independently in case of delinquency. They are operating under the police and order
guards should keep in touch with police executives (SOU 1995:146, 159).
The authors of the 1994 interim report describe additionally that extending the
policing structure doesn’t change the nature of the organizational hierarchy. “The basic idea
behind this development is to let the police maintain the supervision although surveillance is
increased, but by agents other than the regular police” (SOU 1994:122 1994, 203). An area
where this governance is suggested is the Stockholm subway system. The authors advise “a
very close co-operation between the police and order guards” in policing subway lines in
Stockholm (SOU 1995:146 1995, 160).23 The use of order guards in the subway system is
portrayed as a peculiar and modern demand on the police organisation:
It must be noted that the police's duties have been expanded since World War II.
This has happened by the introduction new duties, but also by the fact that the state
has taken on responsibilities that previously were carried out by others. An example
of this is surveillance in subway stations. However, the boundary between what is
the responsibility of the police and what should be done by others has never been
particularly sharp (SOU 1994:122, 44).
Above quote echoes the claims made by scholars who view the fragmenting
policing landscape as a consequence of the state adapting to the late modern policing and the
increasing demand it claims experience (Johnston 1991, 23–24; Philip Stenning and Shearing
23 The subway system in Stockholm could, to some extent, be understood as an ‘mass private property’ due to it
being property that a large proportion of Stockholm’s inhabitants visit and is in part commercially operated.
Stockholm has the highest amount of order guards in service, in comparison with other Swedish cities, which is
partly due to the large amount of order guards deployed throughout the subway lines. Stockholm county
administers the subway system but has since the deregulation era of the 90’s slowly contracted out vital parts of
its operation (Bergström and Khan 2007).
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1979, 230–31). It is easy to hastily interpret the development as the police shedding the demand
and then moving on. However, the fiscal crisis perspective is not, in a Swedish context at least,
fully applicable because the police continuities to govern the non-state policing agencies
surrounding it in a process that resembles Garland’s (1996, 452–55) responsibilisation
strategy. The strategy is partly a survival-kit for late modern policing which outcome is to
activate and engage a wide array of not-state agencies in policing and risk-management. It is a
fragmentation of policing to a wide array of actors; state agencies, commercial actors and
civilians all play a role. This study is delimited to order guards but SOU 1995:146 and its
interim report 1994:122 is not only policy documents discussing private security, but also a
manual for how to engage local communities, private citizens and citizens organisations in
crime prevention and policing.24 Order guards play a pivotal role in the responsibilisation
strategy since it is an agent that overlaps the states (now deteriorating) monopoly of violence
and thus are capable of maintaining order through threats or actual force. Something that is
done with the supervision and co-operation with the regular police still in charge. As previously
mentioned, the 90’s in Sweden (and large parts of the western world) was a decade when
extensive neo-liberal shifts occurred and Garland (1996) points to these political shifts as the
inception for different strategies in activating non-state policing agents. The limited nature of
this study has forced the analysis to focus on the sampled documents, with the result that larger
political discussion is absent. However, the use of order guards could be further explained and
understood when considering the privatisation of numerous public institutes and neo-liberal
development that has occurred in Sweden during the last decades.
The historical observed process is further described in a much more philosophical
matter in one of the most chilling passages encountered in this study, under the headline
‘Monopoly of violence’:
It has been argued that the police should have a monopoly to use violence against
citizens when deemed necessary. What circumstances justifying that a professional
group should have monopoly of force have rarely been touched upon. In addition,
it cannot be said that this principle has been observed to a great extent in recent
decades (SOU 2001:87, 50).
The authors acknowledge thus that the institute of order guards has contributed
to a great shift in the state’s fundamental accountability over the legitimate force. Above
24 Hörnqvist (2001, 53–56) discusses how the states dependence of private initiatives (especially civil society) is
an outcome of the neo-liberal shift that occurred in the 90’s.
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
27
statement should also indicate that the development of private policing in Sweden is much
more significant. It is also a matter of commercial interests now having access to social control
and in the end power over what type of social interactions that will be controlled.
4.2.1 Governing the Crisis
The interim report SOU 2001:87 and the main report SOU 2002:70 are documents which, for
the large parts, that continues the same path as the previous documents from the 90’s. It
describes, however, in even greater detail the co-operation between the public and the private
sphere when maintaining order. The rationalisation behind this incorporates economic
incentives in a much larger scale. The shift in policing is described as a mean to increase the
police economical and functional efficiency by ‘refining the police’ (renondla polisen) and
their operation. Refining could also be understood in a wider governing style of policies that
derives from, as previously discussed, the neo-liberal alignment in society since the 90’s. The
focus on measuring efficiency and peeling of duties that are considered non-efficient are the
cornerstones in New public management (NPM) (for a historical description on how NPM has
impacted the police in Scandinavia see Høigård 2011, 277-279). NPM is, due to lack of space,
not further discussed in this analysis but it is worth mentioning that the concept of NPM is
important to consider in the understanding of ‘refining the police’ and the overall impact that
neoliberal policies have had on public service organizations – amongst the police.
The police are currently carrying out a great load of tasks that the investigation
considers that, with retained quality and legal certainty, could be transfer to another
actor. In addition, there is the opportunity to create a more financial solution if
certain tasks are taken over by another actor. The main purpose of refining the
police's operations is to release some of the existing staff in order to strengthen the
tasks that are central to the police (SOU 2002:70, 13).
Refining the police is effectively redistributing policing responsibilities and shedding the
demand, from the police, to other actors (such as non-governmental agents). It should although
be noted that refining the police is primary not an order maintenance issue (or order guards in
particular) but a matter of how the police as an organisation should (and should not) operate
(SOU 2002:70, 72-74). The matter becomes intertwined with the issue of order guards when
the authors discusses the long-lasting issue of policing rural areas.
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
28
An argument that has been made is to let the police in sparsely populated areas take
on additional duties, which would do it economically feasible to maintain a more
comprehensive police presence and service in these areas. What speaks against such
a solution is that there is a strong need to refining the police's duties to free up
resources for the police's core duties and to clarify the role that the police has in
society. Refining means that duties has to be removed from the police (SOU
2002:70, 305).
The desire to modifying order guards to become an extended arm of the law is
thus partly a side-effect when increasing the organizational ‘efficiency’. The philosophy behind
this echoes marketisation of social control and the idea of the broader concern of fiscal
constraint. However, SOU 2002:70 has a deeper focus, than previous documents, on tightening
the co-operation between the police and order guards. The recommendations made by the
authors could best be understood by the concept of policing through government which
describes how the government enlist policing services that subsequently gets appointed and
executed by private policing agencies (Loader 2000, 327). Private alternatives perform the
operation while the police keep the administrative and authority role. This is an important
finding that extends the theory (in a Swedish context) of plural policing and the concept of
demand shedding. What the documents recommends is not a simple relinquishing of
responsibility but rather expanding and governing the police’s network. This new form of state
strategy is also described by Garland (1996, 454) as “governance-at-a-distance” and a way of
maintaining the demand without expanding the fiscal pressure.
The authors of the 2002 report propose to expand the previously mentioned ‘order
guard model’ and to further tightening the co-operation between the police and order guards;
leading to an overall improvement of the police. “It is important to note that the order guards
are a complement to the police, not a replacement. This proposal reinforces the police's
resources. Service and accessibility to the police increases in sparsely populated areas [with
this model]” (SOU 2002:70, 17). This statement demonstrates the blurriness between private
and public, in social control, that order guards convey. Stenning (2009) argues that pluralisation
of policing has led to a dissolvement of the border between private and public policing due to
demand shedding and the intricate and tight relationship (that has evolved) between these two
spheres. A common misconception about pluralisation is that the division between private and
public, gets crystallised as responsibilities are delegated, but the contrary occurs; policing
through government is dependent of close co-operation, between its actors, creating a merger.
The state steers the operation while private alternatives do significant parts of the rowing.
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
29
As previously mentioned, when the authors of the 2002 report discuss policing
rural areas in Sweden, much of the reasonings are repetitions of the arguments put forward by
the reports from the 90’s but with extended governance and tighter co-operation. The authors
underline repeatedly that crime is low in rural areas meaning that the police repressive force
doesn’t need come in to use as often as in densely populated cites (SOU 2002:70, 218).
Criminological literature on plural policing rarely discusses rural policing as a driving factor
for fragmentation of policing. Why this is a condition that occurs in the Swedish context could
be because Sweden is the fifth most sparsely populated country in Europe (WorldAtlas 2018).
Scholars from more densely populated countries might have overlooked this particular issue.
The absence of crime related discussions, in the SOU’s, is somewhat of a
deviation from the general plural policing literature that upholds crime as a key factor in
understating the prevalence of private policing. Crime is a key argument amongst numerous
scholars who argues that alarmist voices of increasing crime is often used, by the policy makers
and police themselves, to shed demand and justify an expansion of private policing (Button
2002, 29–31; Jones and Newburn 1998, 98–102).
The 2013 report (SOU 2013:19) and its 2012 interim report (SOU 2012:23) are
documents that covers a field that could be directly translated into the concept of ‘mass private
properties’.25 These documents are delimited to order maintenance in sports arenas and
discusses how to combat football hooliganism and other sports related disturbances. The
authors describe how order guards and the police work complimentary in maintaining order.
Order guards has a service-supporting function [..], but with the addition that order
guards has the authority to intervene in case of order disturbance and/or crimes.
Order guards is also under the leadership of the police, which means that order
guards are obliged to follow the police's directives and requests of duties (SOU
2012:23, 126).
The police are not absent when policing sports spectators but is instead, once
again, acting as the spider in the web governing the order maintenance with the participation
of private security. European studies about policing football stadiums indicates that the police
have a general attitude that they don’t have the resources to police sports events and that sport
clubs should pay for their own security (Jones and Newburn 2006, 18; Rodas 2011, 209–10).
25 An interesting side note is that the sole author of these two reports, Björn Eriksson, is a former national police
chief and now the current head of the trade association for private security companies (Säkerhetsbranschen) in
Sweden which shows the revolving door relationship between the public and the private security sphere (Svd
2018).
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
30
The author of the 2012 report describes a similar opinion. The authors “vision is to expand the
club's responsibility” by recommending the police to authorities more order guards in sport
stadiums (SOU 2013:19, 143). “There are also great economic values at stake by doing it. A
rough estimation is that each police officers cost per hour as much as 2.5 order guards!".
Increasing the presence of order guards is thus a fiscal for matter, for the police, suggests the
author of the report.
In conclusion, the documents published 2000 and onwards prescribes on a larger
scale an advanced co-operation between order guards and the police. The rationalisation behind
this is that the police need to refine its core duties and therefore need to transfer some of its
duties onto order guards (but retaining the administrative role of the duties) leading to an
economic and organisational advantage.
4.3 Summary
There are five aspects from the analysis worth highlighting. Firstly, the document published
1978 reluctantly describes how order guards has been temporary installed and used in Sweden.
The report portrayed an understaffed police organisation in latent crisis; unable to withstand
expanding constraints, in the shape of increasing delinquency and a general increased
expectancy from society. The authors described furthermore that the police did not seem to
have the fiscal capability to increase their presence which have resulted in an increase in order
guards filling the void that has occurred. This description echoes one aspect of the fiscal
constraint perspective. Jones and Newburn (2006, 6–8) argues that pluralisation of policing
could be described as a consequence of several possible processes unfolding on separate levels.
One possible explanation is that the police has been exposed to a variety of constraints (i.e.
fiscal issues, increased demand, difficulties curbing escalating crime) that the police has not
been able to amend, leading to a vacuum that private policing has filled (Shearing 1992, 406–
8; Shearing and Stenning 1981, 226–29) and a similar explanation is observed in the analysed
documents.
Secondly, the documents published in the 90’s and onward initially mirrored a
similar development as above (with the same justifications except that crime was not a
reoccurring issue) but with a much clearer emphasis on actively transferring duties (demand
shedding) than previously documents. The redistribution of responsibilities from the police to
non-state actors was much more passive process in the documents predating the 90’s (e.g. order
guards occurred in places where security seemed to be poor). Button (2002, 35–37) describes
demand shedding as a deliberate process; police decides what constraints and demands should
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
31
be relocated when shedding demand while the process off ‘filling a vacuum’ is much more an
action in control by the private security industry.
Thirdly, the fiscal constraint perspective cannot alone describe the observed
development post 90’s. Load shedding is here not a ‘dump-and-forget’ scheme, as the theory
might imply. Instead, the authors prescribe what could be explained as policing through
government. This governing principle is described by Loader (2000, 327) as “situations where
policing services are enlisted by government but provided by others”. Demand is unloaded but
the police keeps administering the actors who executes the assigned duties. This modifies one
of the steps in the fiscal perspective as seen in figure 2 (in comparison with figure 1). The
investigators of the reports spanning between 1994 and 2013, all recommends a rigid co-
operation between the police and the private security industry. They emphasise numerous times
that order guards is subordinate to the police and that order guards are to obey orders from the
police when in need. This also shows that the private-public dichotomy is much more complex
and layered.26
Fourthly, documents published in the 90’s and onwards also brought forward a
sharp discursive shift when discussing policing and the need of order guards. Previous concerns
with what private policing might mean for society was absent in both SOU 1995:146 and its
interim report SOU 1994:122. Order guards was instead described as a necessary policing agent
that had to be used in the modern policing landscape due to the overall demand for police
service that had persisted from the 70’s. However, an even greater variable was in play:
policing rural areas. This was also an issue that was further depicted in SOU 2002:70. The
documents published in the 90’s and onward describes the difficulties of having a police
presence in rural areas because of its distant and remote geographical areas which often had
low crime rates. Having a police presence in these areas was described as an economical
constraint. Policing rural areas could not, according to the authors, alone be done by the police
and thus needed to shed some of its responsibilities onto private options. This is a significant
finding that expands the theoretical explanation, at least in a Swedish context, of the constraint
perspective. An additional mechanism needs to be added (see figure 2) in order to understand
the development in Sweden.
26 It must be underlined that order guards have always been subordinate the police but what is new is the
emphasised that the actors co-operate much more extensively and that the police should more frequently
administer order guards.
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
32
Figure 2. Mechanisms, that occurred in the sampled documents, impacting the prevalence for order
guards.
Fifthly, there were instances in the analysed documents of what could be accounts
of ‘mass private property’. Mentioning of order guards policing in shopping centres and sport
stadiums was reoccurring in most documents. These discussions were however few and brief
which makes it hard to extrapolate from. The ‘mass private properties’ hypothesis has been
criticized for being North America-centric and having problem to adequately capture European
conditions (Jones and Newburn 1999, 238). Research on the phenomena in Europe has shown
that there are elements of ‘mass private properties’ throughout many countries but not enough
to be able to be fully adoptable as a concept (Jones and Newburn 2006; Bonnet, Maillard, and
Roché 2015). If this is also true in Sweden is difficult to tell from the limited material. ‘Mass
private property’ as a concept was however, albeit in much less extent than other explanations,
mentioned throughout the documents included in this study in the form of preventive policing
in shopping malls, sports arenas and especially Stockholm metro system. Figure 2 includes
‘mass private property’ as a mechanism but it should be emphasised that its impact is difficult
to determine based on the limited exposure in the analysed documents.27
27 The underlaying mechanism included in figure 1 are removed in figure 2 because the analysed documents does
not discuss consumer patterns or shifts in ‘property relations’.
Increased Demand Or/And Justification For Private Policing
Mass Private Properties
Demand Shedding &
Policing Through
Government
Public Fiscal Constraints
Increased Demand On The Police
Rural Policing
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
33
6 Conclusion
Going through the State’s Official Investigations (SOU) has been like accessing a time capsule
containing a restorable timeline of formulations for alterations in social control. By
highlighting justifications made by the authors of a series of documents, this study has provided
a basis for further discussion concerning the trajectory of the public police, order guards and
social control in general. Current study also contributes to a broader understanding how plural
policing as a theoretical framework could be understood in a Swedish context. As previously
described, the theory has been criticised for primary considering Anglo-Saxon political and
social conditions. This could of course limit the theoretical applicability, but this study has
been able to extract important concepts from the theory and contrasted them against the
peculiar settings that might be observed in Sweden. Current study asked its empirical material
the following research question: How is the practice of order guards justified in Sweden
between the 1970’s and 2018? The overarching theme upheld by the authors in the analysed
reports is that the Swedish police has experienced continuing constraints and an almost latent
crisis. What the constraints consists of varies. Described strain pre-90’s was concerning
increasing crime rates and an overall increased demand, from the public, on the police. Police
were unable to withstand this pressure by its own (due to fiscal and personnel constraints) and
had to reluctantly accept that order guards must temporarily assist in policing. The authors of
the reports published in the 90’s and onwards argue instead that the previously constraints are
in its nature not temporary but instead here to stay. The police have taken on too much
responsibilities (and therefore needs to be ‘refined’) but the police must also face that the public
will have a continues high demand. Additionally, order guards are permanently necessary
because of the rurality of Sweden which the police are unable to police by themselves. The
authors underline however that there must be a rigid co-operation between the police and order
guards, and not a simple off-loading of duties.
Above outcomes were produced through a document analysis of eight State’s
official reports (five main reports and three interim reports), spanning over five decades. This
process has delivered outcomes that could be further analysed, but this study has several
limitations and needs to be considered. Some of the limitations was described in the
methodology section but additional limitation needs to be highlighted. The data provided by
the documents had various usability. Although each sampled document had an advantage in
coverage (e.g. more search hits of “ordningsvakt*”) than corresponding documents in each
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
34
subgroup, some documents nonetheless lacked meaningful data to analyse. This was especially
the case for the documents sampled between 1980-1989 and 2010-2018. The selected
documents for these time periods only provided partial material which is also why these are
hardly mentioned in the analysis and discussion section. How policing has been reshaped needs
to be further untangled and especially during these time periods. Furthermore, the theory had
difficulties mirroring conditions in Sweden without adding explanatory concepts (i.e. policing
through government) and additional explanations (i.e. the issue of rural policing). The criticism
aimed at the theory, to focused on Anglo-Saxon conditions, has validity to some extent. Lastly,
it is worth underlining that this study only has the capacity to draw conclusions from the
included documents. Present study cannot deliver why and how explanations outside the realm
of these documents.
6.1 Democratic Accountability
It is worth noting that the outcomes of this study are not to prove that order guards or private
policing can’t aid the police achieve socially desirable goals, such as improving safety. The
implications of this study are rather to underline that there is a democratic challenge that needs
to be confronted. An unregulated private policing market might – just as the 1978 report warned
about – become counter-productive in reassuring security. Policy documents has for more than
two decades tried to redistribute policing agents unevenly by clustering the police in some
geographical areas while others are let to be policed primarily by private alternatives. When
areas become neglected, so does security and those who has the material resources might
become the only ones who are able to protect themselves enough to feel safe (see A. Crawford
& Lister, 2006). However, this means also that the focus of the state’s repressive agencies is
narrowed down to specific geographic spaces, which often are materially and social deprived
areas. One of the cornerstones of democracy is equity; harms and benefits of the common
resources should be distributed fairly between individuals and groups (Bayley and Shearing
1996, 593–95). The trajectory of contemporary policing is, unfortunately, not of equal policing
but rather of skewed policing.
6.2 Further Research
An aspect that was not included in this study was the impact that ‘risk mentality’ might have
to the witnessed development of private policing. Individuals are being increasingly
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
35
preoccupied with debating, calculating, identifying, and most of all mitigating risk.28 This
might also contribute to both an increased demand on the police but also a desire to use
alternative policing agencies in areas where the public might feel being at risk for victimisation.
The authors of several of the reports mentions that the police are being constrained partly by
the increased demand from the public but without discussing further why this mentality has
occurred. One way approaches this subject could be by analysing the correlation between
attitude to private policing alternatives and different variables concerning ‘risk’. A second issue
not included in this study, due to lack of space, is how neo-liberal policy has shaped the
observed development. A brief mention of this was made in the introduction of the chapter
4.2.1 but due to lack of space not further discussed. Future studies could focus on which
governments have issued specific SOU’s, what background the contributing authors have and
a broader structural analysis that explores how neo-liberal currents have shaped social control
and the issue of private policing in Sweden. A third suggestion for further research is analysing
what impact the increases in premises that serves alcohol (and increases in serving licenses)
might have on the prevalence of order guards. The number of premises with serving licenses
has tripled in the last thirty years (Folkhälsomyndigheten 2018) and as mentioned in the
background chapter, these premises are often policed by order guards. The remarkable increase
was not further considered in the analysed documents which explains the lack of discussion in
the analysis.
28 For a general discussion how risk is described in different subjects and fields see Beck (2009, 1–23). See chapter
5 in Ericson (2007) for a narrow discussion how risk shapes laws that govern private policing.
Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi
36
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Attachments
Attachment 01. Code Schedule.
1. Constraint Perspective
1.1. Police deficiency
1.2. Crime Rates
1.3. Fiscal Constraints
1.4. Demand Shedding
1.4.1. Policing Through Government
2. Mass Private property
2.1. Quasi-Public
2.2. Sports Arenas
2.3. Shopping Centres
3. Alternative Perspectives
3.1. Rural Policing
3.1.1. Crime Rates
3.1.2. Fiscal Constraints
4. Miscellaneous
4.1. Public-Private Dichotomy
4.2. Private Security Industry