The police's work with police-citizen partnerships

In connection with the reorganisation of the Swedish Police to one Police Authority, the decision was made that police would begin to work with so-called police-citizen partnerships (Sw. medborgarlöften). These are a development, and an integrated part, of the cooperation process which has served as the basis for the work of the police and municipalities for a number of years. The police-citizen partnership model entails that the police, to a greater extent than was previously the case, engage and involve the perceptions, experiences, and know-how of citizens, staff, and other societal actors, and allow this to be reflected in police activities and in the work of crime prevention and safety creation. The working approach is to result in a document – the police-citizen partnership – that describes the measures which the police and its cooperating parties promise to take in order to address identified local problems.

Brå has followed the police-citizen partnership work in four selected areas and evaluated its performance. The purpose of the evaluation is to furnish the police with a picture of the police-citizen partnership work and provide guidance for future development and improvement of this work. In addition, the aim of the study is to identify whether the work in the studied areas has led to any change of direction in respect of the goals established by the police for the police-citizen partnership: for citizens to experience more participation, to increase confidence in the police, to increase the sense of safety, and to prevent more offences.

Brå's assessment

The police-citizen partnerships are a new and a comprehensive working approach, which means that it takes time to implement it and to realise the effects of the work. Brå can observe several advances have been made during the time for evaluation in the four studied areas. As described above, the work has, however, been characterised by a significant number of implementation problems and difficulties, primarily in respect of prioritisation and anchoring. In addition, to date the work has led to minimal changes in the citizens' feeling of participation, confidence in the police, and sense of safety. Moreover, no notable changes in criminality in the four studied areas have been registered.