Social Support and Repression: An Exploration of the Governing of Social Problems in Sweden

Abstract: There is a great belief in the use of repression and increased state control to combat social problems, particularly crime, in current Swedish crime policies, visible through the 34-points program in which most points are aimed at longer penalties and increased state authority. At the same time, the government claims the need for promotion of desistance. This study aims to explore the governing of social problems in Sweden, and the utility of social and repressive control, through the case of desistance from crime, utilizing Wacquant’s conceptualization of the Left and the Right hand of the state to analyze this. I address this aim through semi-structured interviews with desistance workers, and aim to answer; 1) Which measures need to be in place for individuals to desist from crime according to desistance workers? 2) Can desistance organizations provide such measures, and do they have the adequate material and symbolic resources? and 3) How do the social measures provided by desistance organizations and the expanding repressive measures of the criminal justice system relate to each other when it comes to desistance? The results show that social measures such as welfare access and social support are important according to the interviewees, however their ability to provide these measures are partly contingent on their ability to allude to neoliberal logics. Moreover, I could show that a colonization of social interventions by the logics of the Right hand is in progress. The conclusion of this study is that the governing of social problems in Sweden is increasingly guided by neoliberal logics resulting in an individualization of social problems, however, to increase desistance social measures needs to become more accessible and the hindrances that are in place today needs to decrease.