Several of the proposals for a new criminal policy that the Moderates presented on Wednesday directly affect social services. Among other things, the party believes that social services should be strengthened in their collaboration with “police, school, psychiatry and non-profit efforts”. In addition, the party wants to see more social action groups and social workers out in the field.
High on the list is removing confidentiality barriers between social services and the police. Without such a reform, the Moderates believe that the work with young people cannot be strengthened.
– Therefore, we believe that secrecy must be reversed. You must share information unless there are very strong reasons against it, says Ulf Kristersson to SVT.
Invisible to the police
The Sweden Democrats also want to see a change.
– It is a complete disaster with the classified information and the shortcomings in the dialogue between the authorities, says the Sweden Democrats’ legal policy spokesperson Tobias Andersson to SVT.
The government has started to take steps in the right direction, he believes, but the work is going neither far enough nor fast enough. In the meantime, valuable information is lost, according to him.
Investigation into young criminal suspects
Right now, a government investigation on the theme, “Improved measures when children are suspected of crime”, is on its way to the legal council for referral. When the investigators obtained opinions, several police regions “found that the social service, in the opinion of the police, has too strict confidentiality rules to comply with for an effective collaboration to be possible”, according to the investigation.
However, the investigation does not concern children who are generally in the risk zone. And according to the Sweden Democrats, an amendment would therefore come in too late to prevent crime.
– A suspect may have been completely unknown to the police for, let’s say, as much as five years because the police did not have access to the social services’ information, says Tobias Andersson.
SVT has sought out Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson (S), who was not available to give an interview.