Policing in America: Mixed Lessons from Sweden

A Swedish police officer pictured in Helsinborg, Sweden. Photo by Håkan Dahlström.

Living in Sweden for most of my life, I have grown accustomed to a non-confrontational, consensus-based approach to policy-making and never experienced a social movement capable of impacting the political sphere. That all changed this past June, when I watched massive #BLM protests unfold across the Atlantic in response to the brutal killing of George Floyd while in police custody. Shortly thereafter, a well-established demand from social justice campaigners became a plea amongst ordinary people: “Defund the police!” 

 The phrase has caused considerable controversy. Critics have interpreted “defund” to mean “abolish” or “dismantle” police departments. However, the intent is much more far-reaching and humane, calling instead for a redistribution of law enforcement budgets from pure policing to include more community resources such as social services, youth programs, and education, especially in marginalized areas where most of the patrolling occurs. Aspects of what American advocates call for have been tried in other countries, offering models that the U.S. could consider and potentially adopt. Sweden’s police system is frequently cited as an instructive and enlightening example for the U.S. to follow.

 As of September 2020, there were 21,000 police officers in Sweden, ranking Sweden as the country with the third-lowest amount of police officers in the E.U. per capita after its Nordic neighbors Denmark and Finland. Sweden spends 1.3% of its GDP on “public order and safety” compared to the U.S., which spends 2.04%—the most among advanced economies. So, what can the U.S. learn from the successes and failures of  Sweden's smaller police departments? 

 Sweden’s justice system is often associated with “less police abuse and lower crime.” The training provided to prospective officers is crucial to Sweden’s success. In Sweden, police recruits must spend two and a half years training to become police officers. In comparison, basic training in the U.S. can take anywhere between 13 weeks and six months, depending on agencies. A short training period means less opportunity to focus on guidance on crisis intervention or de-escalation. Swedish police are taught primarily to use verbal communication to resolve conflicts, with physical apprehension and firearms as the absolute last resort. In the U.S., officers are instructed to use force more than almost any other type of intervention, and they often don’t receive as much training in so-called “empty hand techniques;” physical techniques used to detain a person without the use of weapons. More often than not, officers in the United States resort to using firearms because they are not comfortable apprehending a suspect with physical force, and when they do use physical force, they are not employing it correctly. 

 American police departments have come under heightened scrutiny stemming from fatal encounters with Black Americans, as have their actions in mental health emergencies. On October 26th, Philadelphia Police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr, a Black man who had mental health issues. Communities across the U.S. are taking a hard look at whether law enforcement should be the first line of response. By narrowing the role of police, Sweden has been able to invest in services addressing issues such as mental health. For example, in Stockholm, mental health emergencies have been handled by Stockholm’s Psychiatric Ambulance, an emergency vehicle with two trained nurses and a driver. This approach aims to free up police resources and allow officers to focus on situations in which they are the experts. If a person has a psychiatric issue, “it should really be dealt with by trained health professionals,” said Andreas Carlborg, managing director of the Northern Stockholm Psychiatry. Having medically qualified specialists handling these cases results in increased attention and care as well as reduced stigmatization of those suffering from mental health conditions. 

 Another major factor is Sweden’s generous welfare state. There are numerous unemployment benefits for low-income citizens: ample funded healthcare, state-subsidized housing, generous social security and free higher education. As a result, Sweden enjoys a high standard of living and is one of the world’s most equal countries, leading to less crime than the U.S., where centuries-long, deep-seated structural inequality is a contributing factor to crime. 

 However, the U.S. does not have the ideological framework to enforce Sweden’s standards of policing. In the public sphere, Swedes exhibit a collectivist mentality toward social institutions due to the welfare state, which could explain why Sweden opted to become a single national police, replacing the previous 21 autonomous county police authorities, in 2015. By contrast, the U.S. has a federalist system of government and is one of the most individualistic cultures in the world with a distinctly decentralized police system: 18,000 federal, state, county, and local agencies are spread across the country serving a population of 330 million people to Sweden’s 10.3 million. In essence, different police models must be tailored to a country’s cultural, political, and geographical context which makes it difficult to broadly apply the Swedish policing model in the U.S.

 It is also important to point out that although Sweden has commendable qualities for its police structure, outside parties tend to overstate the effectiveness and impartiality of the Swedish police force. Sweden’s police force is small because it is underfunded and policing has historically been a low priority across political parties in Sweden, resulting in a shortage of police officers. With a small police department comes a lower probability of solving crime. For example, only 5% of reported rapes in Sweden lead to a conviction and Sweden has a low-resolution rate, 25%, for gun homicides compared to Germany at 90%. The Swedish police confederation has even gone so far as to explore the option of employing Norwegian police in Sweden because there is a surplus of police officers in Norway. Furthermore, although there is less crime in Sweden compared to the U.S., crime rates have still risen in the past ten years, particularly when it comes to sexual offenses, threats, harassment, assault, robbery, and gang violence. 

 Although one could assume that Sweden’s small police departments function better because Sweden is sparsely populated and more “homogeneous” than the U.S., Sweden is not immune to tense race relations between citizens and the police. “Homogenous” is a misnomer. With an increasingly diverse ethnic, religious, and racial demographic (nearly 20% of the population is composed of non-native Swedes), challenges similar to those in the U.S. have arisen. For example, police reports show that drug possession has increased by 79% over the past decade, and police have disproportionately targeted Black and minority Swedes despite higher self-reported drug usage in white neighborhoods. Middle Eastern immigrants have been accused of creating dangerous communities that are now “no-go zones,” areas in which the police are routinely attacked, resulting in a decreased police presence. Swedish police have objected to using the term “no-go zones,” wary of being perceived as racist, but their absence in these vulnerable communities has sowed mistrust among the very residents most affected, those who fear for their safety and livelihoods. While the police are accused of not addressing the conflict head-on, a study by Kantar Sifo found that law and order were the most covered news topics on Swedish Television, radio and social media.

 Despite Sweden’s complicated track record tackling racism, I still did not expect the George Floyd murder that occurred an ocean away to be the tipping point, unlocking the floodgates for racial justice when other local acts of discrimination and mistreatment have not elicited the same reaction. Thousands of Swedes—Black, brown and white—protested this past summer, borrowing slogans from the #BLM movement against police brutality. The cruelty of George Floyd’s death and years of Afro-Swedes feeling as though their concerns about racism and unfair policing were ignored, finally compelled advocates to speak out as they drew parallels within their own countries. 

 However, while protesters in both Sweden and the U.S. rallied against similar patterns of bad policing, harassment and racism, as of 2020, 28 police killings per ten million have occurred in the U.S., compared to the 6 police killings per ten million in Sweden. Black Americans have accounted for 28% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population. 

American policing takes a different form due to the country’s specific historical context. Much of the American criminal justice system was structured to maintain an immoral racial order during the Jim Crow era, and to this day, these systems and institutions propagate the same racially constructed outcomes. For instance, a New York Times article published following the death of George Floyd found that while Black people make up 20% of Minneapolis’s population, in nearly 60% of police interventions there, the person subject to police force is Black, suggesting a correlation between systemic racism and police violence. Since this juxtaposition is more ingrained in the U.S., there should be a different approach to reforming police forces that is specifically tailored to American contextual history. 

 So, does resolving the pitfalls of American policing center on redistributing resources, improving and expanding police training, and adopting a program more similar to that which exists in Sweden? Should police forces delegate some of their current responsibilities to more capable sectors, such as an emergency mental health department, whilst simultaneously opting to centralize their police structure? Although the U.S. can learn a lot from the Swedish policing model, it would require modifications, taking into account American individualism, its fraught racial history, and the regional organization of police departments. Furthermore, the Swedish model in its current form is also embattled due to under-funding and growing cases of racially motivated policing. There have been calls to further reform the Swedish police so they can better address crime and its citizens, suggesting that the concept of “fair policing” is strained everywhere. However, so much discussion centers on policing and defunding it, but policing is one step in remedying an entire system that continues to discriminate against Black and brown people all over the world. The U.S. and Sweden must foster more equitable environments and codify institutions where people feel seen and heard with equal access to opportunities and due process under the law.

Yasmine Dahlberg is a staff writer at CPR and a sophomore interested in journalism and film but majoring in sociology—for now. Growing up with a Haitian-American mother and a Swedish father, her life’s mission is to find the best styling products for multi-textured curls. Feel free to email her at yad2110@columbia.edu about anything she writes or if you want to learn how Midsummer is actually celebrated.