Law and Order as a Leftist Project?

Abstract

Since the 1970s, crime policy has become politicized. Conservative parties have launched the law and order theme and exploited crime in political campaigns. Social Democratic and other leftist parties have more or less reluctantly followed. Since the 1990s, however, the political left itself seems now to take the lead in the reshaping of crime policy in a less liberal direction. Tendencies towards such a development are clearly discernible in Italy, Germany, the UK and the Scandinavian countries. The article discusses a number of elements of and explanations for the sharpening of Social Democratic crime policy in Sweden: a tendency towards alarmism, the tradition of left realism and the politicization of crime policy, the goal of a drug-free society, the practice of an interventionist policy, the increasing use of symbolic legislation, the demand for zero tolerance and the discipline of the market and the increasing inequality. These elements are finally seen as indicators of problems of integration and consensus characterizing Sweden and the political left at the turn of the century.