SWEDISH LAW ENFORCEMENT[1]

In 2000, Pernilla Nilsson was the head of the police region of Skne (Sweden). On August 15, she went to office at 6.00 a.m. to prepare herself for an 8 a.m. meeting with her district heads. Pernilla called the meeting after receiving word that police officers were bitterly disappointed on a project supported by the governing body of Swedish police, the National Police Board (NPB). The project was of strategic importance for the NPB and involved a new policing paradigm, which consisted of enhancing the quality of urban life and deploying preventive policing rather than focusing on traditional police activities like making arrests. The NPB was resolute in its implementation decision but Pernilla was aware that the project was in jeopardy.

POLICE WORK

Policing has witnessed a changing paradigm over recent decades, shifting from the narrow perspective of reducing crime through making arrests to the wider view of strengthening its role in community life. The former is considered reactive and primarily reliant on calls to emergency numbers; it is associated with policing that is considerably inefficient for its usually late arrival at the scene. By contrast, the latter paradigm stresses the need to complement the traditional system by enhancing "community policing" or "neighbourhood policing"meaning that law officers get acquainted to citizens and receive their insights. Therefore, traditional attention to arrests, clearance rates, and speed of responses to calls for police service is being substituted by increasing emphasis on crime prevention, fear reduction and, eventually, an enhancement of the role of the police in raising the quality of urban life.

The concept of crime prevention has two premises. It firstly attempts to encourage those who have not committed crimes not to take that course. For example, at primary school one can easily pick out children who are at greater risk of becoming "permanent customers of the judicial system" latterly. At the same time, it attempts to deject those who have committed crimes from proceeding that way. No matter how high the quality or how large the quantity of crime prevention works, there will always be children, young people and adults who will not listen to reason, that is, "who will get into trouble with the law anyway." The following criteria inspire performance of crime prevention:

• The activity should be conducted in a problem-oriented way, in close contact and co-operation with the public.
• The activity should be carried out by police officers that are personally responsible for a particular geographical area (e.g., part of a police district).
• The size of the area, both geographically and population wise, should be limited so that police officers have a chance to get to know the residents in the area.
• Within the framework of problem-oriented police work, police officers should plan their own work schedule on the basis of a careful analysis of policing needs in the area.
• Police officers should take measures against everyday crime in the area.

Sweden performed some early attempts to implement the new policing paradigm. In 1959, a Royal Circular enacted the new role of "county councils and local police authorities on the subject of crime prevention work by the police."[2] In the 1990s, the police were required by law to prevent crime and other disturbances of the peace or safety of the general public. Further, the Swedish Parliament agreed that police should preserve peace and general security, prevent disturbances of the peace, and intervene when such breaches arise. This approach to crime prevention was reinforced by governmental regulation: "a greater proportion of total police resources should be allocated for crime prevention which, in turn, would necessitate a change in work methods." In a similar vein, different budget bills stated, "crime prevention operations should form a natural component in policing ...[crime prevention] will require a problem-oriented approach to policing." In 1995, the Budget Bill established that "the concerted effort on the road towards problem-oriented neighbourhood policing must ... be implemented within the framework of police training at the National Police College where the new police-in-the-making should receive training adapted to meet the requirements of the new methods of work." Therefore, the crime prevention approach to policing received strong legal and political endorsement.

Crime prevention has implications for the organization of police work. At the local, district level, policing comprises three main activities: community policing, maintaining public order, and crime investigation. Community policing tackles crime prevention by instructing those without a criminal record to refrain from crime. Common problems handled by community policing are peddling alcohol to youth, drug offences (by youths and adults), and drunk driving.

The maintenance of public order requires the authorities to attempt to prevent crime and other disturbances of the peace as well as to take action when a crime is committed.In the main, maintaining public order involves protection, advice, and assistance to the public through specific actions such as supervision of places frequented by criminal and other anti-social individuals, monitoring of habitual criminals, and policing of special events such as demonstrations, rallies, and state visits. For example, crime investigation illustrates the reactive type of work that people often perceive as typical of police work. When an indictable offence has been committed, the police open an investigation with the purpose of identifying the perpetrator. The officer in charge is responsible for making a case to be presented in court. Interestingly, the heavy burden for investigators is reflected in the backlog or investigation balance, which measures the difference between registered and unsolved cases.

POLICING IN SWEDEN

Resources and new policing

During the 1990s, Swedish Law Enforcement experienced a steady decrease in resources, which was caused by continuous calls from the public opinion for more efficient management of resources in the public sector. In the particular case of law enforcement, there was also animosity of the Swedish society against its law enforcement for the wrongdoings in the investigation of Olof Palme's murder, the Swedish Premier. As an example of shrinking resources, the number of employees of Swedish Law Enforcement slumped from 24,759 in 1995 to 21,951 in 1998, whereas reports on crime trends showed that the number of offences increased from 783,000 in 1995 to 819,000 in 1997. In a similar vein, the number of persons convicted of offences dropped from 300,000 persons in 1975 to 100,000 in 1995. Overall, violence inflicted on women and children increased and so swelled the public's anxiety concerning litter, graffiti, disturbing youth gangs and rowdy neighbours.

In such contexts, the NPB realized that its model of policing did not fit with present demands from citizens. After screening what was going on around the world, the Swedish police became interested in the "Zero Tolerance Policing" model that was being deployed in New York City. From the point of view of Swedish Law Enforcement, zero tolerance policing involved awareness that, for example, an un-repaired broken window was a sign that nobody cared and a lead to more damage. In the same manner, minor incivilities -such as aggressive begging, public drunkenness, vandalism and graffiti- if unchecked and uncontrolled generated an atmosphere in which more serious crime could flourish. Over time, individuals may feel that they can get away with minor offences but this will ultimately lead them to commit more serious misdemeanours. In 1997, the NPB supported the deployment of the "Zero Tolerance Model" as a mean to reinforce ongoing pilot projects of Swedish Law Enforcement on the new paradigm of policing.

Organization

The NPB constitutes the top-level authority for police service. Its role primarily consists in providing general planning, advice, assistance, and co-ordination for the efforts at regional and local police levels. The NPB is organized into 21 decentralized county police regions. The regions have a county board that enjoys a significant degree of autonomy in activities such as district planning and allocation of resources. The county police superiors typically hold a degree in law and have limited personal experience in ordinary police work. Counties are, in turn, organized into districts (Figure 1).

Swedish Law Enforcement has an information system that produces statistics on more than one hundred indicators. Measures are reported to the NPB on a monthly basis from local districts, via county authorities.Since the budget is set annually, monthly reports focus on non-financial indicators like crime rates, number of hours of foot patrol, and number of alcohol tests administered. Feedback to local police from the central authorities stems from variation reports that are discussed in monthly review meetings. Nevertheless, this reporting system was deemed unsatisfactory by all layers of the police chain of command: the NPB, the counties, and the districts. A middle-level officer said, "We've got better data from reading the tabloids."

THE BALANCED SCORECARD IN SWEDISH LAW ENFORCEMENT

In 1998, six county police authorities set up a balanced scorecard project in co-ordination with the NPB.Motivation for the implementation of the balanced scorecard in Swedish Law Enforcement was general discontentment with present information system as well as the reputation of the balanced scorecard, which relied on its endorsement by the Harvard Business School. The scorecard aimed to complement the formal system on crime statistics and to enhance planning and control systems within Swedish Law Enforcement. Furthermore, the scorecard aimed at serving as a performance indicator and communication device for the new paradigm of policing. It was thought also that discussions between staff and management on operational goals brought about higher performance results than when goals were set unilaterally by management. The driving idea of the balanced scorecard model in Swedish Law Enforcement was that performance indicators referring to goals/success factors had to be supplemented with information about public opinion concerning local problems and levels of crime victimization or fear of crime. To tackle this objective, the model attempted to develop a triple perspective of past/present/future indicators. The past was captured through historical ratios; the present was reflected through measurement of resources, such as governmental grants, budget, and number of staff; the future was incorporated into the system through forecasts of resources, assessments of staff opportunities and challenges, and public opinion about the work of the police.

The Swedish Law Enforcement scorecard comprised four perspectives: success, staff, citizen, and resources (see Figure 2). The staff perspective addressed personnel as stakeholders in police work, whereas the resources perspective encompassed the government as the main supplier of funding, material and human resources. The citizen perspective accounted for the reaction of the public towards policing. Indicators were reported through a traffic light colour system, where green depicted a fine performance; yellow, an acceptable situation; and red, a poor performance.

The success perspective was regarded as "the most crucial strategic dimension within the balanced scorecard model." When developing this perspective, police authorities started by asking three questions:

What do we want to achieve?

When can we achieve these goals?

How do we measure our progress?

Drawing on discussions with staff, police authorities determined quantitative indicators of success, which included measures of violent crime, drug crime, road traffic, theft and criminal damage, public order, youth crime, crime victims, community policing, and crime investigation. Measures referred to concrete priorities that established how a unit should operate in the short term to achieve its long-term goals and thus consisted of clearly defined and measurable factors collected on a monthly basis. Exhibit 1 provides an example of the breakdown of four success factors (e.g., road traffic, public order, drug crime and crime investigation) into formulation of goals, indicators, measurement and methodology. As shown in Exhibit 1, goals were formulated in a general manner (e.g., for public order, increase safety in public areas during weekends), which in turn resulted in indicators like number of hours of police patrol in public areas during weekends. Each indicator was ultimately measured as green/yellow/red depending on the number of hours of policing at public areas, whose method involved foot and car patrol.

The staff perspective assumed that responsibility and freedom of action had a positive effect on the staff's commitment to their duties and their job satisfaction. Further, it was thought that a high level of commitment and job satisfaction had a positive influence on results. The employee perspective was followed up through yearly surveys of the employees and thus focused on long-term changes.The employee questionnaire covered four main areas: responsibility, autonomy, commitment, and job satisfaction. Questions about responsibility aimed to determine whether the staff performed their duties independently, had well defined areas of responsibility, took personal responsibility for their work, and were willing to assume more responsibility. Enquiries about autonomy were pursued to determine whether the staff had enough freedom of action, made decisions without fear, got relevant information, and the extent to which they perceived that superiors trusted them. Under the commitment factor, questions attempted to reveal whether staff deemed their jobs as important, whether they were encouraged to come up with new ideas, could see how their work fit into the overall work of the unit, and got feedback about results, and whether they were able to use their knowledge in their work. Measures of job satisfaction attempted to determine whether the staff were satisfied with their current duties, whether they perceived that their undertakings were correctly assessed by peers and management, whether they found their current duties interesting, whether they co-operated well, and whether they were satisfied at the end of the working day.

The resource perspective was intended to represent issues of public funding, management of a unit's finances, personnel development, competence levels of staff, and investments in new technologies.

The citizen perspective was intended to capture public opinion about local problems and levels of crime victimization and fear of crime. As noted earlier, annual surveys were conducted to measure police success in "reducing crime and increasing citizens' safety". Accordingly, police needed reliable indicators on citizen safety as well as to learn more about the connection between perceived levels of safety and actual crime levelsas long as these aspects were largely neglected by the NPB's central information system. Therefore, a questionnaire was designed to gather information about these issues, and it comprised four main aspects: problems in residential areas (e.g., littering, criminal damage, drunken people in public places, drug addicts in public places, apartments occupied by drug/alcohol abusers, fighting, women being accosted, teenage gangs, road traffic); crime victimization (e.g., physical violence, theft, criminal damage); fear of falling victim to crime (e.g., theft/criminal damage, assault, fear of going out at night, fear of some individuals or groups, refraining from activities in public places); and the extent to which the public considered that the police were doing something to resolve local problems.

THE BALANCED SCORECARD AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW POLICING PARADIGM

The regional level, characterized by chiefs with a limited experience in policing and considerable time constraints that prevented them from managing their districts by sight, deemed the development of the scorecard as useful, especially for planning purposes. Pernilla, for example, noted: "The scorecard has definitely helped me in my daily work, especially in planning activities." Relevance of the scorecard was reckoned higher than reports produced by the central information system. The latter reports were considered too "cold" and excessively focused on variation analyses that, ultimately, were of little help in explaining the reasons behind reported variations. The scorecard, by contrast, helped them to ascertain the 'whys' of the situation: "The strength of the scorecard comes from its balanced nature. This makes it possible to assess what citizens and staff think with respect to available resources."

The regional level, characterized by chiefs with a limited experience in policing and considerable time constraints that prevented them from managing their districts by sight, deemed the development of the scorecard as useful, especially for planning purposes. Pernilla, for example, noted: "The scorecard has definitely helped me in my daily work, especially in planning activities." In contrast to such positive perception, police officers found some problems in managing their work through the scorecards. For example, police were required by the public to respond to calls for service in situations ranging from medical problems to crime emergencies. It is not unusual, however, for citizens to call police to mediate minor disputes or to find ways to get into locked apartments and cars. Serious crime calls obviously take priority. However, insofar as police stations are among the few government agencies that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, many late night and weekend emergencies fall into the hands of the police, regardless of the importance of the problem within the priorities of the law enforcement organization. This situation, police officers argued, outlined an apparent contradiction between what police should do what they actually do. In other words, the focus of police work on reducing serious crime neglects the role of police in managing disorder in public places, reducing fear of crime, controlling traffic and crowds, and providing services in various emergency situations. Although the missing dimensions of police work were increasingly important and had a significant impact on the quality of urban life, they were difficult to measure. Therefore, police officers asserted that metrics of police work typically concentrated on easy-to-measure dimensions such as number of arrests, response times, and backlog balances of clearance rates, which in turn made officers appear competent in terms of the indicators employed, but which narrowed their focus to the traditional model of policing.

Utilization of the balanced scorecard at the district level presented its problems, especially in the aspects of aggregation and comparison. On aggregation, a police chief noted to Pernilla: "The more you aggregate, the more it turns out yellow, and that's a problem for us." In a similar vein, chiefs found problems assessing the performance of individual districts: "If a district reports red on two scorecards and green on one and yellow on the others, what is then the overall picture of the district?" Many pointed out that data from the scorecard should be complemented with information produced by the central information system (such as crime statistics) and accounting reports (e.g., compliance with budgeted expenditures), and this would produce a fair picture of a district's performance.

Local level police also identified some problems with the scorecard. Perceived problems mainly dealt with the extent to which actual performance indicators were measurable as well as with difficulties in cascading political, general goals to the operational level. Police officers argued that they found a considerable gap between what was measured and what actually constituted real police work: "As a community police officer, you have to know as many people as possible, the more the better. You must listen, get tips, help people, know people, and be around. You can't plan that in advance and measure it on a scorecard. I must be out there working. While others deal with statistics and history, I take care of reality." On a similar theme, another officer wondered: "How can I measure our long-term focused work as well as problem-based police work? When are you supposed to get out of the car and talk to young people who have valuable information? Being able to do that is largely a matter of trust between people and us, and how can the scorecard measure trust building?"

Public order police officers concurred with measurement problems identified by their community police colleagues but also raised issues of goal congruence for local officers. Addressing that issue, an officer reported the following incident:

Reducing drug dealing rated high in our scorecard. We got a tip about some drug dealers, which involved several days of planning and arrangements. Alleged criminal offenders were travelling by train from Stockholm. Then, when we were waiting at the railway station, the radio called us out on a priority 1 job, a car accident. We had to abandon the stakeout and leave the station. It was frustrating for us to realize that the dealers would not be arrested. Policing is largely dominated by the need to provide rapid responses.

Crime investigators work daytime Monday through Friday. They normally have experience in community and public order policing. An investigated case must be carefully prepared before they call in suspects and witnesses for interrogation. Since many cases are unique, it is difficult to predict how much time a single case should take. New facts and crimes can come up during the investigation and delay the case until further prosecution. Another cause of delays is the stand-by approach requiring all investigators to respond to priority 1 crimes. They must interrupt what they are doing to join task forces for acute incidents. Such situations often happen and postpone the balances. Further, investigators must take care of suspects arrested during the night. Though police know these people and how to handle prosecution, the suspects are skilled at denying any knowledge of crimes and so it takes time to handle even a single case. In these circumstances, police officers complained: "It is not easy to find success factors that are really related to our work. In turn, that means that one chooses success factors that are easy to account for. It is easy to count the number of reports in the balances, but that does not depict our achievements. That is only a means of reaching something else."

Question - Comment on the perspectives included in the Balanced Scorecard of Swedish Law Enforcement and their operational indicators. Is this a Balanced Scorecard?