Police officers' view of the investigation of volume crime

In 2006, new resources were allocated to the police in order to contribute to greater visibility, more planned crime prevention work and higher clearance rate. Against this background, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) has been commissioned by the Government to analyse the police’s work. In the first report (Brå 2013:12), we described how the approximately 2,500 new police officers must be seen as a relatively limited investment in practice. Based on the various measurements available, we also described how the extra resources have been distributed among different units and how the result of the work has developed.

The report showed that the police’s results have mainly undergone a positive development over the studied period of time (2006–2012), although the percentage of cleared offences has not increased. In Brå’s opinion the police have not made optimal use of the extra resources to increase the clearance rate. That is to say, based on Brå’s analysis, emergency response teams and investigation units for volume crime do not appear to have been allocated more resources.

Why the investment itself has not led to a higher clearance rate is therefore explained in the first report. The purpose of this report is to listen to what employees within the police force believe stands in the way of increasing the clearance rate, primarily for volume crime, irrespective of the increased number of police officers. What do they perceive as obstacles to and problems in their work? When we speak about problems here, we are referring to both those they feel have worsened in recent years and those that have existed for a long time.