RHP&EO is the electronic journal of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education

Violence Prevention In Transition; In Between The Punitive State And Ad Hoc Populism

Karen Leander

Stockholm County Council & Karolinska Institute, Dept. Public Health Sciences, Div of Social Medicine, Safety Promotion Unit; 172 83 Sundbyberg, Sweden.

Major transformations of Swedish public policy are underway. Sweden's internationally acclaimed "welfare model" is gradually losing structural, financial, and ideological footing, and the search for solutions to social problems is taking new turns. With regard to violence prevention, the state is being increasingly pressured to take victimization more seriously and to strengthen the principles of general deterfence at the expense of individual rehabilitation and prevention. This has often led to the adoption of harsher and more punitive criminal policy measures. Simultaneously, and largely in response to a series of spectacular violent events in recent years, the emergence of ad hoc organizations, movements, and initiatives with violence prevention as their goal has had a profound impact on the public discourse surrounding violence and violence prevention.

These two trends imply that in part new forces and actors are setting the public agenda and defining the concepts of violence and safety. For instance, campaigns aimed at collective consciousness raising and public mobilization against violence are aimed primarily at the risk of "stranger danger" and other out-of-home phenomena. Potential side effects may include an intensification of xenophobia and scapegoating as well as a heightened sense of hostility and fear which may even increase the risk of violence. As many of these ad hoc responses receive increasing amounts of public and private funding, their role in defining the issues is expanding.

At the same time, however, public health officials are encouraging health and safety promotion actors to become active in violence prevention. Such work is expected to integrate components of both social and situational as well as proactive and reactive prevention. The violence prevention program of the Safety Promotion Unit of Stockholm County Council has identified its objectives as counteracting violence and ensuing injuries by means of a coordinated and target-oriented inter-sectoral cooperation; developing methods and action programs in part by improving the county's epidemiological base material; and institutionalizing the program within existing and emerging structures and networks.

To be examined here is the role of the Stockholm County Unit between the state and the independent popular movements in terms of relevance for systematic violence prevention and in light of broader transformations in Swedish society and trends in data on violent events.

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