Contested Distances, Valorized Affinities

1. Introduction

In Sweden, making policing more locally attached and accessible has been on the political and institutional agenda ever since the nationalization of the police force in 1965 (Furuhagen, 2009; Westerberg, 2020). More recently, public debates about local presence and visibility of the police have put an overwhelming focus on minority-populated, disadvantaged neighborhoods in the urban peripheries (Polisen, 2017; Riksrevisionen, 2020). This accords with, and is in part a result of, the widespread perception of these neighborhoods as the epicenters of crime and insecurity. Eruptions of social unrest that arise as a reaction to police handling of situations, and rampant deadly shootings due to gang-related violence, in particular, inform negative narratives about these places.

In this context, the policeʼs local engagement appears a reinvigorated goal to build better relations with communities subject to urban exclusion and stigmatization. The presence of the police in such neighborhoods continues to be a vexed issue, though. Previous research provides certain indications of over-policing as regards, above all, interactions with the youth. As a recent study lays bare, police stops and street controls based on suspicion of drug possession tend to concentrate more heavily on poor neighborhoods and young males with non-western background (Estrada et al., 2022). For ethnic minority youths who reside in these suburbs, encounters with the police often become intimidating, recurrent, and inimical to their sense of belonging to broader society (Haller et al., 2020; Wästerfors & Alm, 2020). Such instances do not seem to be confined to street interactions alone. As Mulinari (2019) notes on Swedish Muslims from stigmatized neighborhoods, contacts and ‘voluntary talksʼ initiated by the secret police service under the frame of anti-terrorism bear similar consequences.

Perhaps rightfully, the literature gives much heed to the perspectives of the disadvantaged youth considering that they are more routinely policed. Admittedly, though, questions about local policing, especially in marginalized suburbs, matter for a greater section of the neighborhood populace (Bell, 2016; Madsen & Kammersgaard, 2022). Bearing this in mind, the present work turns its gaze toward adult experiences and expectations about policing in Stockholmʼs suburbs. It draws on interviews with seventeen adult respondents as participants of local associations in two relatively deprived suburbs that I fictively call Grönort and Lillberg. In theoretical terms, I engage with interdisciplinary debates on distance and proximity in police–community relations (e.g., Innes, 2004; 2020; OʼReilly, 2024), and critical reflections on reassurance and community policing (Loader, 2006; Gascón & Roussell, 2019; Akarsu, 2020; González & Mayka, 2023).

As neighborhood communities are not singular in composition, neither are respondents in this study homogenous in their views and perceptions about policing at local level. Still, they contest and value police practices that reflect their common concerns and aspirations, which is the focus of the discussion here. In this regard, the premises of locally engaged policing, as in officers who are available, recognizable, and knowledgeable about the neighborhood, attentive to community concerns and vulnerabilities, preferably in foot patrols, and maintain courteous interactions with people, seem to be a shared aspiration among the interviewees. Such policing is valorized in its actual or anticipated ability to forge meaningful affinities. In several instances and situations, though, the police are rather experienced as a distant force, both physically and symbolically, akin to Goldsteinʼs (2012) notion of ‘absent presenceʼ. Narratives about policing or police officers who are unfamiliar with the neighborhood, difficult to reach out to, transient, mostly observed in vehicles, and insensitive to already stigmatized youth, are germane to such experiences. Notably, these concerns and aspirations exist side by side with what I call de-emphasizing the police – that is, a critical appreciation of the limits of policing in addressing the problems in disadvantaged suburbs.

Based on these findings, I argue that in Sweden, policing that gives priority to local attachment and community-affirming approaches in places such as Grönort and Lillberg may not reflect the lived experiences of many, but it might have peculiar advantages in its potential to destigmatize and bridge existing ‘recognition gapsʼ engendered by neighborhood marginalization and exclusion (Lamont, 2018). On the other hand, given respondentsʼ de-emphasis of the police and scholarly criticism about ‘ambientʼ policing strategies (e.g. Loader, 2006), there is wisdom in weighing the possible gains of such strategies against the likelihood of police expansionism in the context of urban deprivation.

2. Distances and proximities in policing neighborhoods

Local police presence and proximity to neighborhood communities have long been important questions for policing policy and scholarship. Within the Anglo-American tradition, the discussion has its roots in the so-called Peelian principles in the nineteenth century – a continuous relationship with the public and its consent was deemed necessary for the police in fulfilling their functions (Emsley, 2013; for a critique see Loader 2016). Today it is conventional wisdom that technological advancement together with changes in police organizational bureaucracy and urban dynamics, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, gave birth to police practices around the world that created a certain spatial and, admittedly, social distance between the police and citizens. In his seminal work on police professionalism, William K. Muir (1979) noticed that “[b]y 1970 the walking beat had disappeared from most city streets” due to the reasons mentioned above, plus “the high costs of police labor” (p. 63), paving the way for increasing reliance on patrolling in cars.

Most commentators concur that the historical transition toward motorization “lessened opportunities for casual, non-conflictual interactions between police patrol officers and public” (Bowling et al., 2019, p. 219). Compared to traditional policing that was more localized in neighborhoods, as Reiss (1992) earlier discussed regarding the United States, the rise of the command-and-response model that was supposed to be more rapid and efficient has ironically alienated citizens who “experienced impersonality in their contacts with the police and abandonment of their community and its problems” (p. 92). In more centralized settings such as France, the spread of motorized patrols and the closure of small neighborhood stations went together with the assignment of police officers “with no ties in the neighborhood where they work” and who, in addition, “do not seek to form relationships with the local residents, whom are to them merely strangers and people to be managed” (Mouhanna, 2021, p. 80).

Against this background, urban policing research hints that neighborhood communities may, at least to some extent, valorize relational proximity to, rather than impersonal distance from, the police. Reporting on a mid-size English town, Sparks and colleagues (2001) observed that many residents from the adult population would prefer “the ‘returnʼ of a police officer who is readily identifiable as belonging to a specific community” (p. 891). Umbachʼs (2011) historical chronicle on the Housing Authority Police Department in New York (1952–1995) corroborates this point and documents how communities in public housing projects endured somewhat positive relations with officers from this autonomous unit who frequently patrolled on foot and were well acquainted with – and in some cases even lived in – these neighborhoods. In her study on policing and residential segregation in Cleveland, Bell (2020) similarly shows that social and physical proximity to the police might be desirable “even for low-income people of color who might in other situations exhibit legal cynicism” (p. 937). As Sausdal (2019) underscores in his ethnography on Danish detectives, proximity to the policed has, for better or worse, considerable appeal for police officers themselves who may otherwise get mired in the growth of distant surveillance strategies.

It should be noted that both common-sense and academic appreciations of a policing style which is on more intimate terms with neighborhood communities ‘like the good old daysʼ have nostalgic overtones and may reflect “the old myth of the friendly cop on the beat” (Walker, 1984, p. 86). Such romanticized views of the past, as Walker (1984) once commented on American history, can also be discerned in justifications for aggressive order maintenance strategies that tend to produce adverse consequences for, and criminalization of, disadvantaged minorities in the urban space (Legewie & Fagan, 2019; Legewie & Cricco, 2022).

However, the premises of local proximity can also be found in the advocacy of more lenient approaches that aim to address public alienation from the police, such as reassurance, neighborhood, or community-oriented policing (Brogden & Nijhar, 2005; Innes et al., 2020; OʼReilly, 2024). In a well-cited article, Innes (2004) points to the growing realization by scholars and policymakers of the fact that public safety concerns and fear of crime do not really follow actual crime rates and risk of victimization, a fact, he argues, that points to a ‘reassurance gapʼ (p. 156). Police officers who are known to the local populace and “visible, accessible and familiar,” not least through foot patrols, should thus be adopted as one of the components of a reassurance strategy. As the argument goes, it is insufficient to rely on police officers alone but also necessary to involve citizens in coproducing security and to make policing “responsive to the needs of the public” by giving priority to “problems that matter most to them” (p. 162, see also Innes et al., 2020) Beyond the English-speaking world, similar ideas informed persistent or obsolete practices such as police de proximité in France (de Maillard & Zagrodzki, 2021), toplum destekli polislik in Turkey (Akarsu, 2020) or närpolis in Sweden (Peterson, 2010), to name a few.¹

Promising as it is, the notion of locally engaged policing that resonates with what Bayley (1996) previously listed as the virtues of “our police officer” in the neighborhood, has also been met by criticism. In a thoughtful intervention, Loader (2006) argued that such strategies are likely to turn the police into a pervasive force. These forms of “ambient policing”, as he put, stem from an interest “to redress what is alleged to have become the insecurity-generating remoteness of police authority from everyday life” (p. 205) and draw on the flawed assumption that the police will deliver better services if they work in greater proximity to the public. Although Loader acknowledges variations in ambient policing strategies, he claims that they “share an express or implied commitment to raising overall numbers of policing operatives […], coupled with a conception of the policing purpose that is expansive, proactive, and visible” (p. 205).

In fact, Loader is not alone in this critical assessment (e.g., Waddington, 1999; Herbert, 2006; Rios et al., 2020; Mazzola, 2023). However, he makes two points, among others, that are worth mentioning here: First, the ideas behind ambient policing overstate the role that policing plays in building the publicʼs sense of security. Efforts to make the police a co-owner of social problems and a necessary component of community cohesion “risk making security a pervasive [emphasis original] feature of social and political life” (p. 208). As a result, the police may turn into a “colonizing force” that enters “areas of public life and policy (housing, or education, or youth work) where they have no proper business” (p. 209). Second, the belief that the police need to become less distant from the public and everyday life mostly speaks to the fears, demands, and concerns of societyʼs more privileged members – in other words, demands to make policing more “visible, accessible, and familiar” are often “pressed by middle-class constituencies replete with social and economic capital” and show “little express concern with the interests of the routinely policed” (pp. 207–208). Under conditions in which security thus becomes pervasive, he adds, anxieties about crime and insecurity can lead to an “authoritarian spiral”, that is, voices for “more police, more police powers, crackdowns on this offense or those suspects” (p. 216), or to a “fragmentation spiral” whereby citizens act upon their anxieties by their own means of security provision.

As recent research lays bare, Loaderʼs concerns are not totally unfounded. In the context of low-income, minority-populated urban areas, initiatives to bring the police closer to local communities may indeed lead to “expansion of police power” (Gascón & Roussell, 2019, on Los Angeles), formation of “citizen forces” with authoritarian, repressive demands (Akarsu, 2020, on Istanbul), or manifestation of “asymmetric citizenship” that translates into unequal policing of more versus less privileged groups (González & Mayka, 2023, on São Paolo). Having said that, community understandings of policing that aims to reach out to residents of poor and stigmatized districts can also be fragmented, perhaps even contradictory. Studying a Danish case of a neighborhood labeled as “ghetto,” Madsen and Kammersgaard (2022) discuss initiatives to increase police visibility and local cooperation that are both well received and contested by different members of the population. Approval of such initiatives seems to be contingent on “the ability of the police to inscribe themselves positively into the socio-historical dynamics within a targeted community” (p. 2).

In short, even though questions related to police local engagement, proximity and presence versus social and professional distance are perhaps as old as the history of the institution itself, their relevance has hardly faded over time. Disadvantaged neighborhoods with concentrated minority populations raise specific challenges and questions due to the frequent community experiences with over-policing and under-protection (Rios, 2011; Fassin, 2013; Body-Gentrot & Wenden, 2014; Barret & Welsh, 2018; Magaloni et al., 2020; Yonucu, 2022). While differences abound as to material destitution and state policies of redress, urban margins are widely subjected to territorial stigmatization that infects local populationsʼ relationship with and perceptions about the state (Wacquant 2007). Sweden does not seem to be a complete outlier in this regard (Haller et al., 2020; Wästerfors & Alm, 2020; Estrada et al., 2022; Mulinari & Keskinen, 2022). Hence, it is plausible to assume that in socially deprived neighborhoods where the state in some respects is experienced as absent or neglectful, policing that is visible, familiar, and accessible can be a relative aspiration as long as it is attentive and shows courtesy and understanding (see also Goldstein 2017). Such policing may have community-affirming implications and be valued in its potential to bridge what Michèle Lamont (2018) calls “recognition gaps” that stem from “disparities in worth and cultural memberships between groups in a society” (pp. 421–422).

3. At the welfare stateʼs urban margins

Grönort and Lillberg are two suburbs in northern and southern fringes of Stockholm. Large sections of these neighborhoods were built under the ambitious Million Program in the 1960s and 1970s. The programʼs overarching aim was to address the countryʼs pressing housing shortage in the post-war period and to provide affordable and decent accommodation. It targeted especially those who were much affected by the structural changes in the labor market due to mechanization of production and had to move from rural to urban centers.

The Million Program was effective in the supply of relatively high standard dwellings for significant segments of the population through non-profit municipal enterprises and prioritization of rental tenure. While monumental in size and scope, this project owed its achievement in part to rapid construction in a functional style (Swedish National Board of Housing, 2008). This created residential enclaves, especially in urban outskirts mostly characterized by long, monotonous apartment blocks far from inner-city facilities (Grundström & Molina, 2016). Consequently, Million Program districts have above all attracted young and lower-income groups, plus newly arrived immigrant communities. For more affluent households, though, these neighborhoods barely served as a long-term settlement alternative and were at best regarded as a temporary solution (Molina, 1997, p. 87). The shift toward a more deregulated, market-oriented housing policy in the following decades resulted in the shrinking of state subsidies and brought about material burdens for maintenance and renewal. Over time, many dwellings of the Million Program have deteriorated due to lack of investment and remained “in severe need of upgrading” (Listerborn et al., 2020, p. 122).

At present, both Grönort and Lillberg are lower-income neighborhoods in suburban Stockholm. Ethnic minorities make up between two-thirds and three-fourths of their residents, proportionally much higher than Stockholm as a whole. The average income of the population aged between 20 and 64 was reported, in 2021, as being circa 25% lower in Grönort and Lillberg than in Stockholm County as a whole. In Grönort, the proportion of residents who have hard time making ends meet and receive financial assistance from the state was registered as being three times higher than the county average in 2022 (5.4 versus 1.8%). Taking the same reference for comparison, the ratio of the population at risk of persistent poverty was reported as being almost twice as much in Lillberg the year before (11%). Children are particularly vulnerable in this respect. Official data show that in areas with the greatest socioeconomic difficulties, about 30% of children suffer from low standards of living, whereas the corresponding number for areas with most favorable conditions is 2% (Statistics Sweden, 2022, p. 14). As regards educational attainment, the latest figures reveal that almost one in five persons aged between 25 and 64 living in either of these neighborhoods have no education beyond pre-high school education, a ratio which presents a sharp contrast (up to six times) with more prosperous areas of the city. Housing conditions in poorer suburbs complement this picture. Overcrowded apartments are indeed more commonplace in places such as Grönort and Lillberg, and in some districts account for up to 60% of all residents (Stockholm Municipality, 2020, p. 19).

These figures are at odds with the egalitarian ideals of the Swedish welfare state. Indeed, urban inequality and segregation have grown on a relentless trajectory since the 1990s as neoliberalism took a firm hold in the country and become decidedly racialized (Schierup & Ålund, 2011; Skryman et al., 2023). Like their counterparts, disadvantaged neighborhoods in Sweden are subject to degrading discourses. Negative media coverage inflates the image of these areas as hostile and dangerous environments (Ericsson et al., 2002; Stjernborg et al., 2015).

Surveys into experiences with crime provide a more nuanced picture. With respect to crimes such as assault, robbery, property offenses, or crimes against persons such as pickpocketing, harassment, or fraud, differences between disadvantaged and other urban areas are discernible. Self-reported victimization seems overall higher in the former, though not indicative of a huge gap. Moreover, a greater portion of the population report that they feel insecure out at night in their own neighborhood (National Council for Crime Prevention [hereafter Brå], 2018a). The same holds for Grönort and Lillberg. Part of the explanation may lie in the latest spiral of gang-related gun violence that particularly afflicts disadvantaged neighborhoods (Sturup et al., 2019). Frustrated by this development, civil and parental initiatives such as Förorten mot våld (the suburb against violence) have been formed. Notably, these groups consider ongoing gun violence as a “national crisis” (Gelin, 2017).

4. The police in place

Grönort and Lillberg belong to police districts North and South in Stockholm. Police districts operate under the broader geographical division of police regions and are themselves subdivided into smaller police areas. This came into effect after the reorganization of the entire police force in 2015 that unified 21 police authorities under a single organization (Swedish Police Authority, hereafter SPA). The latest drift toward centralization notwithstanding, discussions about policing policy and reform in the country have repeatedly invoked the idea of a locally anchored police service almost as a Sisyphean task, ever since the Swedish police was nationalized in 1965. Initially, this idea arose as a reaction to the tendency of the police bureaucracy to turn into monolithic machinery alienated from citizen needs and interests (Westerberg, 2020). More investment in kvarterspoliser (neighborhood police) who would master their beat on foot patrols and become the familiar face of the police at neighborhood level was one of the proposals that came out of public inquiry and police commission reports from the late 1970s (Furuhagen, 2009, pp. 51–53).²

Emphasis on local attachment was also imprinted on närpolisreformen – a police reform which was launched in the early 1990s and drew its inspiration from the premises of community- and problem-oriented policing. The reform introduced a division of labor whereby much of the core police functions would be solely undertaken at the local level. It promoted the idea of cooperation with local population, schools, and social services (Brå, 2001).³ This rationale also permeates the formalization of concerted efforts between the police and municipalities since 2008, and in advertised, if not consistently held, police–citizen meetings after 2015 (Brå, 2018, p. 7).

Within this trajectory, neighborhoods like Grönort and Lillberg have been accorded a more relegated status in local policing discourse and practice. Upon government commission in 2014, SPA was given the mandate to identify and develop specific strategies at “problem areas” or what in common parlance are known as utsatta områden. Since then, SPA has been categorizing neighborhoods it labels with low socioeconomic status and criminal penetration, reluctance to cooperate with state agents, prevalence of “conspiracy of silence” and “parallel social structures” as alarming deviations (Polisen, 2017). For that matter, police operations such as Fenix and Mareld target neighborhoods designated in SPAs classification (Brå 2016, Ghazinour & Eriksson, 2022). These operations, it is reported, were largely driven by an objective to contain what according to police authorities constitutes “society-threatening criminality”, including eruptions of social unrest, youth gangs, use and sale of drugs, hate crimes, extortion, gun violence, arson, and terrorism financing (Brå, 2016, p. 19–24). The extent to which such operations serve or improve the publicʼs sense of security in these areas remains dubious, let alone why specifically these infractions, but not others, are deemed a peculiar threat to society. Lately, the reliability of SPAʼs categorization of neighborhoods has also come under scrutiny (Riksrevisionen, 2020; Salonen, 2023).

5. The interviews

As “sociologyʼs standard workhorse method” – Lamont and Swidlerʼs (2014) description – interviewing brings forth respondentsʼ “credible voice to experience” (Gubrium et al., 2012, p. 2). It enables the researcher to explore their life experiences that extend over time and space. With this purpose in mind, I conducted interviews with seventeen adult men and women as participants of neighborhood associations in Grönort and Lillberg.

My focus on neighborhood associations is motivated as follows: These organizations can be seen as local forums that bring together people who are interested in, and willing to do something for, the neighborhood. Through such engagements people meet one another and share personal and vicarious experiences pertinent to neighborhood issues. Thus, neighborhood associations may enable their members to become active participants in urban matters that affect their everyday lives (Abers, 2000; Bengtsson et al., 2009). In Sweden, the general shift since the 1990s toward a service-oriented civil society, together with the gradual disappearance of district offices of public and private enterprises, has left local associations in resource-poor urban territories with a challenge to substitute for the welfare state in addressing urban disadvantage (Kings, 2011). As one might expect, such a daunting task entails a certain familiarity with the needs and concerns of the local population.

To reach out to my prospective respondents, I primarily relied on purposeful and convenience sampling. Such an empirical strategy has obvious limitations as regards generalizability and the likelihood that the researcher ends up meeting people whose stories are “not necessarily reflective of all viewpoints” (Saumure & Given, 2008, p. 125). Wary of this constraint, I tried to diversify my points of entry by using multiple channels. I began by focusing on those associations that have a primary interest in neighborhood social issues rather than the ones whose main orientation is recreational. Such a distinction nevertheless proved to be less straightforward than I thought as I observed that concern with neighborhood social issues was implicit in many associations, even if their domain of activity was, for instance, sports. I also attended public events, and navigated through municipality homepages and social media as a first step to get in touch with associations that might be relevant for, and possibly contribute to, this study. Ultimately, I contacted associations with divergent and convergent orientations such as organizing leisure for the youth and the elderly, weekly night patrols on the streets, assisting people in communicating with public and private services, providing homework assistance to students in primary and secondary education, and taking various roles in tenant and property-owner associations. To establish rapport, I held prior meetings with my prospective respondents.

Interview participants were adult men (eight) and women (nine) aged between 28 and 70, with a majority above 40 years old. In this respect, this research foregrounds the perspectives of more senior members of the local population in contrast to the studies that focus on the experiences of youths (Haller et al., 2020; Wästerfors & Alm, 2020). Even though age distribution is thus rather skewed, adult perspectives might differ from those of youths who more frequently become targets of police-initiated contacts (see also Fahlberg, 2018). That is, adult perceptions may be less antagonistic in general; however, their involvement in local associations provides a vantage point to gain vicarious experiences that may influence oneʼs own perceptions about criminal (in)justice (Mondak et al., 2017).

I conducted the interviews in a period from October 2021 to April 2022. The interviews lasted about an hour and usually took place in the associationsʼ facilities, in public places and, in one case only, in the respondentʼs home. I met them individually, except for four occasions where two people from the same association were present at the same time. I asked them about their experiences with and observations and expectations about policing at local level. With informed consent, the interviews were recorded and transcribed by the author. The names and places presented in the results are all pseudonyms. For analytical purposes, I first coded the material openly in a loose fashion, and then reduced the initial labels to more encompassing categories (Rennstam & Wästerfors, 2015). The discussion below presents the three main themes that capture the contested and valorized aspects of policing in Grönort and Lillberg from the perspective of the respondents.

6. Results

7. Conclusion

Local police presence and engagement remain salient issues, particularly in marginalized urban peripheries. There is little doubt that visibility and presence as such are insufficient to describe how policing operates locally. Depending on the nature of specific police routines and practices, as well as interactions with people, proximity versus distance can take different meanings. They may be conceived both as nuisance and as amenity for the neighborhood populace. From the standpoint of the adult respondents in this study, distance turns into an undesirable condition when policing is experienced as inaccessible, relatively disengaged and transient, and remote to the needs and interests of the neighborhood. By contrast, policing that is locally knowledgeable, accessible and responsive, shows courtesy in interactions and preferably on foot, is appreciated in its actual or potential ability to forge affinities that are valued. My conclusion is that in Sweden, and arguably beyond, these contested distances and valorized affinities need to be understood within a neighborhood context in which stigmatization, socioeconomic deprivation and, for some, a sense of state neglect, are tangible. Under such circumstances, it is conceivable that policing that foregrounds community-affirming approaches would resonate better with respondentsʼ neighborhood aspirations.

From a critical perspective, as mentioned above, strategies that aim to bridge the gap between the police and the policed, supposedly on behalf of the latter, may, unwittingly or not, bring about police expansionism or repressive demands that usually clamp down on societyʼs weakest or most vulnerable (Loader, 2006; Akarsu, 2020; González & Mayka, 2023). Although it might be a limitation of this work, there is no clear pattern in the interviews that could be straightforwardly interpreted as ready acceptance of more, or more authoritarian, policing in the Stockholm suburbs studied here. Narratives that de-emphasize the police are often skeptical about letting the policing perspective invade the social sphere and become the main instrument in dealing with a multitude of neighborhood issues. This does not mean that social control, formal or informal, is insignificant for the respondents – quite the contrary, at least for some, particularly when it comes to their trepidations about youths. Yet, instead of showing a deliberate neglect for the routinely policed and their interests, such trepidations seem to reflect respondentsʼ worries not just related to youth crime and victimization but also about police aggression.

It should be reiterated that adult perspectives might be relatively more favorable to policing and social control than those of the youth. Hence, it is plausible to read these results with some caution against this background. A similar note can be made about race and ethnicity. Focusing on the experiences of a specific minority group, or members of the ethnic majority only, might have generated results that could be somewhat divergent from the findings presented above. The picture may also vary in suburbs comparable to Grönort and Lillberg, let alone other regions of Sweden. Still, it is perfectly possible that the concerns and aspirations related to policing discussed in this paper are not unique to socially deprived suburbs alone. In the context of neighborhood disadvantage and stigmatization, however, concerns about alienating distances and valorization of affinities take on specific meanings that are hardly inextricable from the adversities of urban inequality that beset the everyday lives of the communities in these places.