BROTTSPREVENTION I EUROPA En kritisk komparativ diskursanalys av brottsprevention riktat mot ungdomsbrottslighet i England och Sverige

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates how crime prevention is represented with the aim of preventing and reducing youth crime in two crime prevention strategies for Croydon in England and Stockholm in Sweden for the period 2022-2026. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to increased knowledge and deeper understanding about how crime prevention is represented by prevailing discourse in policy documents against juvenile delinquency in Europe by conducting a comparative analysis. The study was conducted based on Carol Bacchi’s theory “What’s the problem represented to be”. Three adapted questions from the WPR approach were translated to critically discourse-analytically examine two policy-oriented strategies against youth crime on local level in Croydon and Stockholm. The comparative analysis was guided by the responses that could be identified based on the WPR-adapted questions, analyzing similarities and differences. Several conclusions could be drawn from the analysis. The strategies represent crime prevention as individualized. Consequently, there is an interpretation and discourse to unravel regarding the notion that young individuals and the type of criminality the young person is at risk of engaging in are fundamentally influenced at the individual level without altering a societal structure. This also gives rise to questions about power dynamics and subordination due to aspects left unproblematic in the strategies.