Extended Arm of the Law - s u · Extended Arm of the Law Enes Al Weswasi 3 The scholarly interest in the fragmented policing landscape emerged in the 70’s and is now an extensive

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.


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


"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


1

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).


2

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


3

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


4

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.


5

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.


6

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).


7

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


8

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.


9

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.


10

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


11

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.


12

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


13

(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.


14

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


135 Hits

Frihetsberövande Vid Bråk Och

Berusning 1982:6465 Hits

48 % Of Total Hits


879 Hits

Trygghet Mot Brott 1995:146 &

Trygghet Mot Brott I Lokalsamhället

1994:122759 Hits

86 % Of Total Hits


1 290 Hits

Polisverksamhet I Förändring 2002:70

& Mot Ökad Koncentration

2001:87672 Hits

52 % Of Total Hits


405 Hits

Mer Glädje För Pengarna 2013:19 & Mindre Våld För Pengarna 2012:23

175 Hits43 % Of Total Hits


15

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


16

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.


17

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.


18

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.


19

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).


20

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).


21

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,


22

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


23

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


24

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).


25

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).


26

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.


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.


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.


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).


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


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.


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


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


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


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.


36

References

Bäck, H. (2015). Den svenska politiken: strukturer, processer och resultat. Stockholm: Liber.

Bayley, D. H., & Shearing, C. D. (1996). The future of policing. Law and Society Review, 585–

606.

Beck, U. (2009). World at risk. Polity.

Bergström, T., & Khan, J. (2007). SL och hållbara transporter.

Berndtsson, J., & Stern, M. (2011). Private Security and the Public-Private Divide.

International Political Sociology, 5(4), 408–425.

Berndtsson, J., & Stern, M. (2013). Public servants from the private sector. Commercialising

Security in Europe: Political Consequences for Peace Operations, 58.

Bonnet, F., Maillard, J. D., & Roché, S. (2015). Plural Policing of Public Places in France.

Between Private and Local Policing, 20.

Bowen, G. A. (2009). Document analysis as a qualitative research method. Qualitative

Research Journal, 9(2), 27–40.

Button, M. (2002). Private policing. Devon: Willan.

Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Coffey, A., Atkinson, P., & Omarzu, J. (1997). Making sense of qualitative data. Psyccritiques,

42(7), 650.

Crawford, A., & Lister, S. (2004). The extended policing family: Visible patrols in residential

areas. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Crawford, A., & Lister, S. (2006). Additional security patrols in residential areas: notes from

the marketplace. Policing & Society, 16(02), 164–188.

Crawford, M. (2004). The world in a shopping mall.

Devroe, E., & Terpstra, J. (2015). Plural policing in Western Europe: a comparison. European

Journal on Policing Studies, 2, 11.


37

Doyle, M., Frogner, L., Andershed, H., & Andershed, A.-K. (2016). Feelings of safety in the

presence of the police, security guards, and police volunteers. European Journal on

Criminal Policy and Research, 22(1), 19–40.

Ericson, R. V. (2007). Crime in an insecure world. Polity.

Flyghed, J. (2014). Privat område: revisionsbyråers och säkerhetsföretags polisarbete. In

Finstad & Lomell (Eds.), Motmæle – en antologi til Kjersti Ericsson, Cecilie Høigård

og Gurli Larsen (pp. 131–146). Oslo: Novus Forlag.

Frogner, L., Andershed, H., Lindberg, O., & Johansson, M. (2013). Directed patrol for

preventing city centre street violence in Sweden—a hot spot policing intervention.

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 19(4), 333–350.

Garland, D. (1996). The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in

Contemporary Society. British Journal of Criminology, 36(4), 445–471.

George, B., & Button, M. (2000). Private security. Perpetuity Press.

Graneheim, U. H., & Lundman, B. (2004). Qualitative content analysis in nursing research:

concepts, procedures and measures to achieve trustworthiness. Nurse Education Today,

24(2), 105–112.

Guwallius, K. (2017). Ordningsvakter - nödlösningen som blev permanent. Stockholm: Verbal.

Hansen Löfstrand, C., Loftus, B., & Loader, I. (2017). Private security as moral drama: a tale

of two scandals. Policing and Society, 1–17.

Hörnqvist, M. (2001). Allas vårt ansvar i praktiken: en statligt organiserad folkrörelse mot

brott.

Høigård, C. (2011). Policing the north. Crime and Justice, 40(1), 265-348.

Johnston, L. (1991). Privatisation and the police function: from ‘new police’ to ‘new policing.’

In Beyond Law and Order (pp. 18–40). Springer.


38

Johnston, L. (1999). Private policing in context. European Journal on Criminal Policy and

Research, 7(2), 175–196.

Johnston, L. (2000). Private policing: problems and prospects. In F. Leishman, B. Loveday, &

S. P. Savage (Eds.), Core issues in policing (pp. 67–82). Pearson Education.

Johnston, L. (2003). From ‘pluralisation’ to ‘the police extended family’: discourses on the

governance of community policing in Britain. International Journal of the Sociology of

Law, 31(3), 185–204.

Johnson, R. B. (1997). Examining the validity structure of qualitative research. Education,

118(2), 282.

Jones, T., & Newburn, T. (1998). Private security and public policing. Clarendon Press.

Jones, T., & Newburn, T. (1999). Urban change and policing: mass private property re-

considered. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 7(2), 225–244.

Jones, T., & Newburn, T. (Eds.). (2006). Plural policing: a comparative perspective. London;

New York: Routledge.

Kempa, M., Carrier, R., Wood, J., & Shearing, C. (1999). Reflections of the Evolving Concept

of “Private Policing.”.

Kempa, M., Stenning, P., & Wood, J. (2004). Policing Communal Spaces. British Journal of

Criminology, 44(4), 562–581.

Loader, I. (1997). Private security and the demand for protection in contemporary Britain.

Policing and Society, 7(3), 143–162.

Loader, I. (2000). Plural Policing and Democratic Governance. Social & Legal Studies, 9(3),

323–345.

Mawby, R. I. (2016). Rural policing and policing the rural: A constable countryside?

Routledge.


39

Munck, J. (2005). Ordningsvakt och väktare: regler för ordningsvakter och bevakningsföretag.

Stockholm: Norstedts juridik.

Oc, T., & Tiesdell, S. (1997). Safer city centres: reviving the public realm. Sage.

Osborne, D., & Gaebler, T. (1992). Rethinking government. Reading: Addison, Wesley.

Ödman, P.-J. (2007). Tolkning, förståelse, vetande: hermeneutik i teori och praktik. Stockholm:

Norstedts akademiska förlag.

Polisen. (2017). Årsredovisning 2016. Stockholm: Polisens tryckeri.

Potter, W. J., & Levine‐Donnerstein, D. (1999). Rethinking validity and reliability in content

analysis.

Rodas, A. A. (2011). Plural policing in action: exploring the nature of security networks in

English and Australian stadiums. University of New South Wales.

Shearing, C. D. (1992). The Relation between Public and Private Policing. Crime and Justice,

15, 399–434.

Shearing, C. D., Farnell, M. B., & Stenning, P. C. (1980). Contract security in Ontario. Centre

of Criminology, University of Toronto.

Shearing, C. D., & Stenning, P. C. (1981). Modern Private Security: Its Growth and

Implications. Crime and Justice, 193–245.

Shearing, C. D., & Stenning, P. C. (1982). Private security and its implications: a north

American perspective. Australian Institute of Criminology.

Shearing, C. D., & Stenning, P. C. (1983). Private security: implications for social control.

Social Problems, 30(5), 493–506.

Shearing, C. D., & Stenning, P. C. (1987). Private policing. Sage Newbury Park, CA.

Slansky, D. A. (2006). Private police and democracy. Am. Crim. L. Rev., 43, 89.

SOU 1978:33. (1978). Ordningsvakter. Stockholm: Liber Förlag.


40

SOU 1994:122. (1994). Trygghet mot brott i lokalsamhället: delbetänkande. Stockholm:

Fritze.

SOU 1995:146. (1995). Trygghet mot brott: rollfördelning och samverkan. Stockholm: Fritze.

SOU 2001:87. (2001). Mot ökad koncentration: delbetänkande. Stockholm: Fritzes

SOU 2002:70. (2002). Polisverksamhet i förändring: delbetänkande. Stockholm: Fritze.

SOU 2012:23. (2012). Mindre våld för pengarna: delbetänkande. Stockholm: Fritze.

SOU 2013:19. (2013). Mer glädje för pengarna. Stockholm: Fritze.

South, N. (1988). Policing for profit: The private security sector. Sage.

Spitzer, S., & Scull, A. T. (1977). Privatization and Capitalist Development: The Case of the

Private Police. Social Problems, 25(1), 18–29.

Steden, R. van, & Jones, T. (2010). Explaining the growth of plural policing: Comparing the

Netherlands and Britain.

Stenning, P. (2009). Governance and Accountability in a Plural Policing Environment--the

Story so Far. Policing, 3(1), 22–33.

Stenning, Philip, & Shearing, C. (1979). The Quiet Revolution: The Nature, Development and

General Legal Implications of Private Security in Canada.

Stenström, A. (2017a). The limits of the decentred state: the case of policing insurance claims

fraud. The British Journal of Sociology.

Stenström, A. (2017b). The private policing of insurance claims: power, profit and private

justice. The British Journal of Criminology.

Svenonius, O. (2012). The Stockholm Security Project: Plural policing, security and

surveillance. Information Polity, (1), 35–43.

Tham, H. (2001). Law and order as a leftist project? The case of Sweden. Punishment &

Society, 3(3), 409–426.


41

van Stokkom, B., & Terpstra, J. (2016). Plural policing, the public good, and the constitutional

state: an international comparison of Austria and Canada–Ontario. Policing and

Society, 1–16.

Von Hofer, H. (2011). Brott och straff i Sverige. Kriminologiska institutionen, Stockholms

universitet.

Waard, J. (1999). The Private Security Industry in International Perspective. European Journal

on Criminal Policy and Research, 7(2), 143–174.

Wakefield, A. (2012). Selling security. Routledge.

Weber, M. (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Oxford University Press.

Wikman, S., Estrada, F., & Nilsson, A. (2010). Våld i arbetslivet: En kriminologisk

kunskapsöversikt. Arbetsmiljöverket.

Other Sources

Ds 2003:50. (2003). Ordningsvakter och väktare.

Folkhälsomyndigheten (2018). Antal stadigvarande serveringstillstånd.

www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/globalassets/statistik-

uppfoljning/alkoholstatistik/antal-stadigvarande-serveringstillstand.pdf [2018-06-06]

Lag (1980:578) om ordningsvakter

Linköpings universitet (2018). SOU-sök. www.ep.liu.se/databases/sou [2018-06-04]

Polislag (1984:387)

Rikspolisstyrelsen, L. (2012). Promemoria - Konsekvensutredning med anledning av

Rikspolisstyrelsens föreskrifter och allmänna råd till lagen (1974:191) och

förordningen (1989:149) om bevakningsföretag.

Svd. (2018). Låt vakter ta över en del av polisens jobb. https://www.svd.se/lat-vakter-ta-over-

en-del-av-polisens-jobb [2018-04-7]


42

Säkerhetsbranschen. (2018). Säkerhetsbranschen. http://www.sakerhetsbranschen.se/ [2018-

04-07]

WorldAtlas. (2018). European Countries by Population Density.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-population-density.html

[2018-05-12]


43

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