Policing in Sweden

Transcript of interview with May-Britt Rinaldo Ronnebro 

SKN

Hello everyone, Susanne Knabe-Nicol here from Police Science Dr and today, I bring to you an exclusive interview with May-Britt Rinaldo Ronnebro from Sweden. She’s a former police officer, she’s now active in academia, she’s a very big proponent of evidence-based policing, she’s very active on the international policing stage as well and she’s going to talk to us a little bit about what Swedish policing is like and what kind of challenges they face, so hello and thank you very much for coming, May-Britt.

MBRR

Thank you, Susanne, happy to be here.

SKN

First of all, would you like to give us a bit of a background of who you are, what your experiences are and what you’ve done with your life so far?

MBRR

I’m a retired police officer from Sweden, I joined the Swedish police in 1976 and did the uniformed service for 18 years, whatever I could be involved in. I would think that I have faced most crimes that can be done according to the Swedish legislation. Later on I moved into the crime investigation, I started with juveniles and then moved over to sexual child abuse and child abuse with neglect, rape and also touched on bank robberies and murders. After a while this went to be too heavy and I decided to apply for another kind of position and ended up to be investigator at the internal affairs, investigated police officers, police staff, also judges, prosecutors who had committed an kind of crime or any kind of misconduct. This was really interesting and it was a totally different way of working, compared to working with the public, as I had done before. Some years later, about 10 years after that, I moved into administration and was a staff officer for several years and ended up as responsible for education and further education as well within crime prevention in the Swedish police. Doing that, I came in contact of course with universities around the world and I did my Master in evidence-based policing that is called applied criminology and police management at Cambridge University and I started to teach at lineus University where I'm still affiliated to and do certain kind of lectures and also exam explanations so that's very short about me.

SKN

Well, there was already a lot of variety in there. Moving to Swedish policing, could you give us a brief overview of the number of people living in Sweden, maybe how many police you’ve got and how policing is set up in Sweden? How does it work over there?

 MBRR

In Sweden we've got more than 10.5 million inhabitants, so we have had a really dramatic increase since 2014 with the number of people living in the country due to immigration and particularly during 2014/15 and into 2016 we had a lot of unrest both in Africa but also in East Asia and also in some of the Arabic countries. So for that number, 10.5 million, we got 23,844 police officers at the end of 2024. I know that there is now an additional nearly 1,000 new police cadets that join the police for their probation, and on top of this we also got what we call the secret police, the numbers are not official so I can't tell how many there are but there are a few over there of course with the situation as it is very close to Russia and the unrest in an ongoing war in Ukraine.

So, to understand the numbers of police officers according to the inhabitants, we are 280 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, and that's a very low figure within the European Union, as the average for the EU is 341 police officers per 100,000 inhabitants. The Swedish police is national and we got the first female National Police Commissioner serving since last year, 2024, Mrs Petra Lundh who is our national commissioner. She is located in Stockholm and is running the National Police with her board of course and also with contact with all the Regional Police Commissioners who are seven to the number, so we got seven regions and they are divided into police districts would be the correct term I think in English. And every police district is divided into local police areas. And the main police service to the citizens on the ground is delivered by the local police areas. We also got of course departments that are divided into sections, and these departments are like HR, human resources, that employ people, do a lot of different kind of service, and they also are responsible of the education. There is IT, there is communication, there is also one department of work with everything that got to do with legislation where there is complicated questions. We also got one national police that also work with development of the police service and also collect or, well ‘gather’ is more correct police officers and police staff with special skills, etc.

SKN

And what is the educational route? What is the training like? Do you need to have a certain level of qualification before you can even be considered? And what kind of training do you get whilst you’re training to become a police officer?

MBRR

You need to be a Swiss citizen, that’s number one. You need to be 18 years of age and of course a driving license for a car, this is the basic to begin with before you can apply for it, and the application is done online to begin with. Additionally to this, you need to be able to swim, there is three different things that you need to do in swimming: you need to swim during a certain time, different kind of variations of swimming, and also diving, and it's a 10 minutes maximum of that test. Medical, they also look at you and you need to have a good sight, it's allowed with correction but you can't have too much of correction if you need glasses, and you also need to hear correctly of course from the very beginning, and your BMI [body mass index], how big you are around your waist could vary between 18 and 33, so if you are under that or above it, you wouldn't be considered due to any kind of health issues. Of course not using drugs and hopefully not an alcoholic as well, but drugs is really crucial to due to legislation in Sweden.  When you gone through that part of the application, they also check your education, what you got and most of police students today they done some kind of h academic course or might have a degree depending on where in life they are, or they've been working for a little while. Then it would be a psychological test, it's an interview and it also would be a security test. So, this is the basic for it. And it's the Police Authority together with the Swedish Defence Conscription and Assessment Agency that are doing most of the tests and also the interviews with you. You can choose between on-site training where you apply to come to one of the five places where you do education, two years at one of the universities, so there are five places in the country, but you can also do distance learning to become Swedish police officer, two years as well. And now, since 2019 I think it is open for specialists that can go through the same application system to do a more concentrated training to become police officers, they are mainly already employed by the Swedish police but they are academics or pracademics from different kind of skills we need that we can't identify among police officers. And they do one and a half years and after that two years /  one and a half year is six months of probation service. So we are lucky if we can find about 1,000 us students for each start of the year, it normally starts in January and one starts in August / September to all this five places around, and then they go through the semesters to do the exams

SKN

There’s a few interesting bits there that I wanted to pick up on. I’ve never come across the requirement to be able to swim to become a police officer. I don’t think we’ve got that here in the UK, is there a particular reason for that?

MBRR

I would say that we talk about a lot of lakes in Finland, our neighbour country, the ‘country with thousand lakes’ but we got more than 100,000 lakes and we got a lot of rivers and the country is two thirds surrounded with sea, so you got the seaside and of course you need to be able to swim because that is part of what happens when you don't have the fire department or any other kind of rescue teams nearby, that you might need to jump in as police officer and it happens every year here that we need to rescue people that way. And of course we need to be able to swim or if we are ourselves pushed into the water because we got many cities with water inside like lakes or rivers or streams and if you are pushed in in a fight or anything and you end up in the water, you need to be able to rescue yourself.

SKN

That’s quite interesting, over 100,000 lakes, I see it now, and two thirds of the country surrounded by the sea. The other thing I wanted to pick up on was the specialist route? So, if somebody like an academic for example, you said they’re often already employed by the police, what kind of academics does the police employ?

MBRR

Well it's from the IT quite a lot due to the digital crimes that are in huge numbers, I think that is all over the world today, but we also face this in Sweden, so we need specialists to investigate, they do an investigation, they can do the interrogations and interviews with victims, but some of the things they can't do due to the legislation and they need to work together with the police officer. So, to increase their ability to do the case all the way through, we identify those that would be both interested to be police officers but also got the background skills, social welfare workers for child abuse or domestic violence, we also employ to the Swedish police people within communication, people with special interests and education when it comes to environmental crimes, etc., etc. And these are extreme specialists within their area but they also need to have the authority of a police officer. We are not sworn police officers, but by legislation we are given the power to use what we call ‘violence’ or ‘the power over people’ to make decisions about seizing things for example, or to go into a search of a house on decision by the prosecutor, and as police officer of course you can do more within that field if you got the training as police officer.

SKN

For existing employees, who need a few more powers, they have this compressed route to spend 1.5 years rather than 2 to become a police officer, but retain their remit within that specialist area that they’re already working in, correct?

MBRR

Yeah and mainly all of them passing through would do the exams, will do the six months of uniform training and then they go back to their ordinary position, the function that they had before they started the training. Sometimes, one or two a year maybe will find this more interesting and they stay in the uniform part for a longer time just because they thought this is what policing is about, the other thing is more administration when it comes to investigation, so they might do several years or find that more like the policing they wanted to do. But you can also apply from outside as an academic depending on your background and with your graduation, so if you got a bachelor or a master degree, that is of interest for us in the police. You can also apply for this compact training which is absolutely compact, then also go the same route - one and a half year plus the six months to become a police officer with already an allocated position where you would end up in policing after that.

SKN

What are the challenges the police face in Sweden and how has this changed over time?

MBRR

As every Western country we have had what I would say the ordinary crimes like well theft, domestic violence, very rarely a murder, it was very low number of murders in Sweden when I joined and also for many many years when I was serving officer, it was big news if something like that happened. Of course we had fraud, those ordinary things, with time with computers coming into this, I remember myself going to the first training about digital crimes, I went to Germany because there was no such training in Sweden to understand how it was used, and it was just because at that time, I was working in sexual child abuse and came across child abuse online pictures of children in situations we don't want to see, and we don't want it to happen at all. So I went to that and digital crime today is huge, large large number of frauds against any person within society, but there is also targeted vulnerable victims, like elderly people, and also young teenagers for example, but also ordinary people and also against companies. So, digital crime is really a challenge for us, we also got the gang criminality and I think that is well known by now around the Western world that we got shootings between different kind of gangs or groups that fight about the drug market. But what happened the last month but also before, but not in the number as it is today - for example we are on the 30th of January, and we had 31 detonations against people's dwellings the past 29 days. And that is really upsetting, both when it comes to politicians, to the media, but particularly for the public people that are totally innocent that are victims of this, because if a detonation happenes it's not only the target that might not even be at home that will be upset and be frightened, etc., it's also all the neighbours and a full street and extended areas around that. It's a public danger when it comes to these people doing this and we know it's both related to these shootings with among the gangs or the groups, but it's also about trying to get in money from people that they are frightening, they tell people that ‘You owe me money’ and then you try to get the money by detonation. So, this is really the big media, the big political stuff right now, but what we also see is that due to this, we also piling up investigations when it comes to domestic violence, violence against women and girls, you can also see that petty crimes are not investigated in the same numbers due to the fact that we need to move police resources into these more serious crimes.

SKN

Can you just clarify, you had how many bombings in January so far?

MBRR

31 as of yesterday evening.

SKN

31, right, and yesterday evening was the 29^th January, 2025. You’re saying this is gang-related and extortion, but the targets of these attacks, are they in any way related to those gangs, are they completely random and wrong addresses, or who are these targets who have a bomb thrown into their house, I suppose?

MBRR

Well it could be one person that is connected to this gang or to the this fraud business, but it could also be owners of like a pizzeria or a store or a small kiosk, that it's protection money they want from them. It can also be what actually did happened, they misread the address and these bombs are thrown into the totally wrong address, and totally innocent families are affected, losing their homes. I wouldn't say that I can't feel safe because I feel safe in my country but with people doing this and if they can't read properly, it could happen anywhere, and this is the upsetting thing right now, they are so young, many of the perpetrators are less than 15 years, some of them, or they are like between 15 - 20 years and they can't understand the consequences, it's not only the target that will be affected, it's a large area, big number of people that are affected by it because there a lot of crime victims.

SKN

So 15-20 years old, often these perpetrators. Where are these gangs from that are causing some of this and that are fighting each other?

MBRR

They have spread all over the country. When you look at the drug business, just a few years back it was Stockholm, the capital, Gothenburg the second largest and Mal third largest of the country. But now you can see small places, not really villages, but small towns that are affected by these gangs because they expand. I know that our neighbours in Norway are not happy because they also expand into Norway and causing problem over there.

SKN

Do you have any idea why these gangs chose to set up in Sweden? You mentioned to me when we spoke earlier, they’re often from Afghanistan and Somalia, fighting each other in these drug wars, any idea why they have selected Sweden?

MBRR

We had a large immigration as I mentioned earlier during 2014/15 and when you look at who they are, they might be Swedish citizens today, but they are unemployed or they are people with less abilities to get to work or even pass through school, they didn't go to school or they couldn't really understand the Swedish school system and whatever teachers tried to do, they never really brought them to pass through the full school system. 23:02 and of course it's the glorification of being a gang leader or being a member of a gang because of quick money and you think that you will be rich quickly by doing small things, but the small things will escalate very quickly, and what we are also seeing is that some of these people doing these really horrible crimes have never done anything before. They are not even known to the police and then they suddenly pop up and because they would they would like to prove themselves being good to the gang because that is kind of camaraderie among these people. Of course, like we would like to have friends, they would like to have friends, too so it's a complicated thing.

SKN

These aspects all sound very familiar and very similar to what we’ve got in many other countries as well. What is the state of the use of science in policing, and evidence-based policing, for example? Can you first give a very brief definition of what evidence-based policing  or EBP is; can you find it in Sweden and generally, how is science in Sweden?

MBRR

We got something that is called an annual strategic business plan for the Swedish police. It’s broken down for from the government that tell the police what they are supposed to focus on, and they normally tell us to focus on everything, everything is important. But at the same time, we also need to decide what to do because we need to work all legislation, we can't say that ‘now we just do this’, but we sometimes need to move the resources into, like we I mentioned earlier, into this serious crime. So, evidence-based policing is more about delivering policing with academics’ research behind and that you've seen probably several times that you tried and checked out that this kind of delivering policing is a positive outcome, it gives results, it also makes you more likely to deliver the correct policing, and also the legitimacy of the police will increase, the trust in police will increase. So, it's a lot of combinations within this, and evidence-based policing is decided by the 25:49 Swedish police that it should be working according to the evidence base that is delivered by the academics. And also since 2009 until last year [2024] sent Swedish police officer / Swedish police staff to Cambridge University to study evidence-based policing at the master program I mentioned earlier. We have had like 20 plus from the Swedish police by now, unfortunately, nearly 10 already left the Swedish police including myself due to age, and so there are not that many left, but I know that they are very engaged into trying to teach others and also trying to bring in evidence-based policing into the daily business. But it's slow progress and last year the group from Cambridge came together and decided to found the Swedish evidence-based society, so we hope together, as we are now 125 of us to deliver more of evidence-based policing both within the Swedish police but also on behalf of the universities who we are connected to.

SKN

That sounds good and promising. Do you also want to give us a quick overview of the International Policing Association and your role in that?

MBRR

I've been a member of the international Police Association since 1981 and I'm the former president of the Swedish section, a section is equal to a country, it's a friendship organisation but we are standing on different pillars. So we got a professional pillar, we got a social culture pillar, and we got one that we call international relations. So, we do quite a lot of cooperation with police authorities, we do a lot of cooperation with universities etc., to try to educate our members. There are about 372,000 around the world in about 100 countries, so we got our own Education Centre in Germany. When it comes to social and culture of course that is to look after people that are have ending up in in crisis, like a flooding or a wildfire or things like this there’s the possibility from the society to help them, then we try to help our members as well. Culture, we do different kind of activities where people come together and learn about culture and also learn about traditions in different countries to increase the human thought about having peace on the earth and the global peace is really important to us, because that is how it once started in 1950. So, as a police officer and also the president, I worked according to the sustainable development goal from the UN and I did so as the international chairperson for the professional commission. And my last position internationally was Secretary General, but I also did a lot of training of course for police officers but also try to expand our organisation to increase numbers of sections, but also to try to help people to become members. Because every country hasn't a section and then they can apply for membership in another country, so it's a good way to get to know people over the borders and it has been for me a fantastic possibility to build my network with people from different countries. And by aging in policing, I had more and more use of that network when it comes to my investigations, and also knowledge about latest research within like sexual child abuse or domestic violence or whatever area it was that I was working in. And I could ask those people also for help, not only on LinkedIn but also within my own organisation.

What I do now, since last year I work with something that is called #ShesIPA we try to increase visibility of female police officers and we also try to empower female members and we got our own little pin and we got our own little coin that is about female police officers that we sell and the money goes to a sponsorship where we help police women in low-income countries to be able to come to our training seminars in Germany. So, there are so many things that we can do. I’m also running, together with a colleague Marie Daly from Ireland, a mentorship program for female police officers from British Overseas Territories, and I also do like you, Susanne, I do interviews for Policing TV with interesting people both female and male that are good role models for female police officers and female police staff, so if the people would like to join IPA, they are so welcome to do that.

SKN

That sounds great, I’ll probably put a link at the bottom of the article and wherever this interviews’ going to be, that sounds really worthwhile. And especially the support you’re giving women in low-income countries. As my last question for today, if you had a magic wand and you could wave it to make one change in policing, what would that change be?

MBRR

Oh wow, well I wish I could make everyone aware of evidence-based policing because that was a fantastic eye-opener to myself and I can see if that could be more heavily implemented in the police training, already in the basics, I'm sure that we would have a different delivery to the public and also, with the increase that is decided by the politicians of police officers, we need to educate the young generation into this, because they will spill over to those that already are in the organisation and with a pracademic way of policing. Of course, having a profession as police officer or being police staff and know what the academics are delivering and how we can implement it in a practical way I think is the future for us. If we should be able to conquer some of the criminality that we are facing and also know that we do the best to protect ourselves and the citizens of our country.

SKN

I couldn’t agree more. May-Bitt, thank you very much for your time today, and I hope that people from other countries will find it very, very useful what was discussed here. Thank you for that.