Gränser för polisiär innovation – rättssäkerhet, enhetlighet och demokratisk legitimitet

AbstractThe literature on policing asserts that there has been a remarkable emphasis on innovation in police work over the last decades. During the same time, police organizations in several countries have been centralized to promote increased unity and response to political steering and method development. In Sweden, the police reform was motivated by a perceived correlation between uniformity in working methods and organizational effectiveness. From a legal perspective, innovation in police methods involves inherent questions of rule of law – ensuring legality, compatibility with human rights, and predictability for citizens. This also carries implications for democratic legitimacy, since the police have far-reaching power to interfere with citizens’ spheres of interest. This article discusses issues of innovation within the Swedish police from a rule of law and democracy perspective. Innovation in police work is discussed on a system level through a study of the legal framework and institutional conditions introduced with the creation of the new police organization. Results are presented from an interview study with police managers on different levels within the new organization. The results suggest that innovation in police work develops largely organically at different levels and units within the police organization and then spread as “best practices” which the new Police Authority is seen as organizationally able to pick up and disseminate. Secondly, police openness to new evidence-based methods from outside the organization is increasing. Thirdly, there is a tension between the increased ability to create uniformity in methods and the need to adjust these methods to local conditions. Lastly, some uncertainties regarding legal accountability seem to exist as new methods are developed and implemented

Kvalitativ legalitet : ett demokratiskt perspektiv

Legalitet är ett grundläggande rättsligt värde. Inom vissa kontexter har dess uttryck i form av legalitetsprincipen ansetts innefatta vissa kvalitetsmått i fråga om exempelvis tillgänglighet, klarhet, förutsebarhet och begränsat godtycke. Det har traditionellt argumenterats för att denna kvalitativa legalitet fyller en funktion främst ur perspektivet individens rättssäkerhet, inomrättsliga kvalitetsmått eller rättslig rationalitet. Utifrån exempel på den kvalitativa legalitetens uttolkning i Europadomstolens praxis, analyseras i denna artikel den roll kvalitativ legalitet spelar i att underbygga rättens demokratiska legitimitet utifrån en teoretisk bakgrund av demokratiskt samtycke och delägarskap. Artikeln artikulerar sambanden mellan rättslig och demokratisk legitimitet och visar hur den kvalitativa legaliteten fyller en viktig funktion i att upprätthålla en rimlig koppling mellan den demokratiska processen och rättens effekter samt en begränsad och förutsebar överlåtelse av makt mellan den lagstiftande och exekutiva makten. Dessa funktioner understryker betydelsen av att i möjligaste mån upprätthålla kvalitativ legalitet bortom den rättighetsbegränsande kontexten.Polisarbetet – mellan effektivitet och rättsstatlighe

Legality and Democratic Deliberation in Black Box Policing

The injection of emerging technologies into policing implies that policing mandates in law may become mediated and applied through opaque machine learning algorithms, artificial intelligence, or surveillance tools – contributing to a form of ‘black box policing’ challenging foreseeability and clarity and expanding discretionary legal spaces. In this paper, this issue is explored from a constitutional and rule of law perspective, using the requirements of qualitative legality elaborated by the European Court of Human Rights and the implicit democratic values that they serve. Placing this concept of legality into a wider theoretical framework allows legality to be translated into a context of emerging technology to maintain the connections between rule of law, democracy, and individual autonomy

Swedish police implementation of IMSI-catchers in a European law perspective

In this article the qualitative requirements of legality under the European Convention on Human Rights are analyzed as they apply to the use of ‘IMSI-catchers’ – a technical device to track the location and use of cell phones. The implementation of IMSI-catchers in the Swedish police is used as a case study and litmus test to illustrate how domestic law may interact with the requirements under convention law in this area. The article shows that the Swedish implementation of IMSI-catchers in substantive law has lagged behind the actual use of the measure in police work through references to the domestic legal principle that ‘the ether is free’ that serve to preclude legal protection of confidentiality of radio communications. The application of this principle highlights deficiencies in the conformity of Swedish law with both the EU ePrivacy directive and the requirements of legality under the European Convention.Policing in Sweden – Efficiency and Rule of Law in Police Wor