Folkets polyfoni och gängkriminaliteten - Ett rättsteoretiskt perspektiv på straffskärpningar och polisupprustningar i Sverige

Sammanfattning: The 34-point programme to combat organised crime is an ongoing codification of a political shift in the legislator’s view of criminal policy and the societal role of the police force. The measures are often criticised by academics and experts in the field for being ineffective, and that the means are not empirically proven to achieve the goals put forth. The thesis aims to give an explanation to this political shift, through a historically materialist, and legal theoretical analysis of Swedish criminal law during the 20th century, and the government’s motives for the 34-point programme. A joint reading of Locke’s theories of the societal contract, and political anthropology expresses two distinct ways of looking at the evolution of political society, with one goal: to see one’s place in history, and to not accept reality for what it is, but rather for what it could be. Marx expresses a similar method in his materialist understanding of the world, which opens the possibility of applying the social contract, in a post-modern world, through the critical theory of the Frankfurt school. Habermas views democracy as a continuous process, and power as a corrupting force that needs restraining, and that can be counteracted through further democratization. That is if self-determination and the notion that all people are created equal is something we can agree is worth holding on to. Fascism is the natural evolution of a society that has ceased to democratize and should not be viewed as a pathological problem. Swedish punitive law has throughout the 20th century, up until today taken different forms, but a general belief in the government’s ability to right societies wrongs permeate the punitive sanctions of the last century. ‘Folkhemmet’ – the people’s home – did not account for a heterogenic population, and legal measures became a means for conformity. The punitive turn is the latest expression of this, and a more militant strategy has taken form. The effects of the punitive turn are hard to predict, but history has hardly given any appealing examples.