Research project The purpose of this project is to study in a scientific and structured manner whether, with regard to the integration of subject areas, the Swedish Police’s conflict-management concept POLKON creates the conditions for a good work environment for individual police officers.
The project is part of the ongoing quality assurance of POLKON as a concept in systematic work environment management. Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a patrolling and emergency response police officer, an inspector (chief of group), a sergeant (in charge of field operations) and a POLKON instructor in each region; so, a total of 28 interviews.
During 2020 and 2021, Umeå University conducted a study on behalf of the Swedish Police Authority with the aim of better understanding what influences a police officer to act in a given way and use methods and techniques from the tactical knowledge area to deal with various situations. Among other things, the study underlined the need for greater understanding of the integrated tactical approach in its entirety going back to national basic tactics; i.e., “a guideline for all police officers in their approach to and assessment of the individual or group she/he communicates with or intervenes against, the physical surroundings and their own abilities and limitations”. The aim of national basic tactics was that police officers should develop the ability to act in a legally certain and effective manner and to reduce injuries to the police, those they intervene against and third parties.
This project is an extension of the earlier project and is intended to expand data gathering to all seven police regions. This study will focus on the subject areas in POLKON and integrating these into a single concept. The study will not address how POLKON training is perceived and implemented. The anticipated result of the study is the quality assurance of POLKON as a concept in systematic work environment management.
