Tracing structural racism in Swedish policing: Laws, practices, and technologies of criminalized difference

Abstract

In 2008, the Swedish legislature removed any references to race and racial difference, formalizing a post-racial discourse. This has resulted in both the near impossibility of proving discrimination based on racialized difference, and a formal denial of racial discrimination as a social and structural problem. This article attempts to circumscribe these difficulties by suggesting an approach for tracing structural racism in Swedish policing. We argue that a claim of structural racism in policing cannot be studied by counting self-proclaimed racist officers or through individual experiences, for race is a structure in and of itself. Instead, we claim that structural racism can methodologically be studied through a combined reading of relevant (a) laws, (b) practices, and (c) technologies of policing, since these habitually produce racialized outcomes even in the absence of direct references to race or ethnicity. Reflecting this tripartite approach to the study of structural racism, we analyze data gathered from these three specific sites. We argue that developments in criminal policies and policing practices reproduce and reinforce structural racism as part of the wider penal structure, leading to a reproduction of the targets of punitive policies and police control in the intersection of class, place, race, and ethnicity.