Assessing the Accessibility of Police Services in Sweden

• Main Author: Stassen, Richard
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: KTH, Urbana och regionala studier 2018
• Subjects: Central Place Theory; Sweden; policing; GIS; rural mobility; Other Civil Engineering; Annan samhällsbyggnadsteknik; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-237280

Providing a nation’s citizens with timely and effective police services is a complex task, particularly in rural areas where limited resources must be allocated across vast, sparsely populated areas—to date, little research has sought to understand this process. The aim of this thesis is to assess the accessibility of police services in Sweden. Central place theory (CPT) serves as a theoretical framework for understanding how police services are spatially arranged. Differences in accessibility are evaluated with respect to two low-mobility groups—older adults, and women. This thesis employs open data provided by the Swedish police, Statistics Sweden (SCB), and Eurostat. Geographic information systems (GIS) are used to perform network analyses by which drive-times to police stations are calculated. Group differences in accessibility are examined by comparing average drive-times between areas where standardized population ratios (SPR) reveal differences in group representation. Results show that the spatial structure of police services resembles CPT’s prediction in that important services are widely distributed, whereas specialized services are found in more central cities. However, the observations do not perfectly adhere to the theoretical structure, implying that factors exogenous to CPT have some role in determining service point locations. Regarding accessibility, older adults tend to be overrepresented in areas far from police stations, suggesting lower levels of access to the services they offer. Sex was not found to be a significant factor influencing access, except in that men tend to be overrepresented in remote parts of northern Sweden. Att tillhandahålla effektiva och lägliga polistjänster är en komplex uppgift för ett lands medborgare, särskilt på landsbygden där begränsade resurser måste tilldelas över omfattande och glesbefolkade områden— hittills har lite forskning eftersträvat att förstå denna process. Målet av denna avhandling är att bedöma den rumsliga strukturen och tillgängligheten av ...