The Local Safety Measurement System – strategic studies for local policing

• In Event: Urban Dynamics and Community Safety

Abstract

The Local Safety Measurement System (LSMS) was introduced in The Swedish Police late 1990`s. The overall political goals set for the Swedish police service – to reduce crime and increase public safety – are central. Due to LSMS, the ideas and opinions of the people living or working in an area served will become a crucial element in the planning of everyday policing. In Sweden, the Local Governments now has a statutory responsibility for crime prevention. Dialogue and collaboration are greatly facilitated by the results from the measurement.

By 2024, more than 1.3 million respondents have responded to police surveys. 2000 municipalities, divided into 5000 geographical parts. have been surveyed when each occasion counts over the years. Data has been collected with the same questions, sequencing, data collection methods, and where the only changes have been a couple of new questions, when introduced, they are always placed last in the survey. The response rate is high, around 60 percent on average.

Increasing crime have been a dominant theme in Sweden throughout the 2020s and have become the most important political issue. Unnoticed is that vulnerability that individuals exposed to violence, theft and criminal damage has been reduced in a dramatic way. This is the prime findings shown by The Local Safety Measurement System.

Today, analyses always take place using established patterns, that merged in a brand-new manner 2022, such as algorithms, Clopper-Pearson accurate binomial model, confidence interval, forecasting science and police experience. This seems to be an exceptional efficient method with few equivalents when reviewing safety studies.

The purpose of the presentation is to discuss the data from The Swedish Local Measurement System 1998 – 2023 and how follow-up systems and analysis are structured. Since 2022 with a unique analysis model, unknown elsewhere, for safety measurements, also retroactively calculated back to 1998.

Author

• Kjell Elefalk, Senior Advisor