Thomas Bodström, former minister of justice wrote in an article today that the police should have the right to impose sentences directly in smaller crimes.
Today the Social Democratic former minister of justice, Thomas Bodström wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter, where he criticizes the current government and presents the Social democratic ideas. Bodström is rather harsh in his critique against the current centre-right government, and above he criticises all the minister of justice, Beatrice Ask from the Moderate party.
Bodström mentions many areas where the government did promise more money before the elections 2006 and which today according to him are struggling with tougher budget restrictions than before. The problematic areas that he is pointing at are the police force against economic crimes, the prisons and public attorneys.
The former minister then presents some of the Social democatic proposals for making the Swedish legal system better and more efficient. Most of the proposals are well-known, like smaller central police administration, the creation of a Swedish ”FBI” against heavy crime and more efficient planning the prisons.
But the proposal which is new and quite interesting is about the competence of the police. Bodström proposes that police officers with ’special competence’ should be able to impose sentences on their own in smaller crimes. This would make the process much faster which in turn would mean a quicker response from the society. It would also relieve the public attorneys from much of these daily simple routine business and leave more room for investigating more serious crimes.
Source: Dagens Nyheter (www.dn.se)
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Mats Öhlén
mats.ohlen@stockholmnews.com