Police made 1,182 security-zone searches and seized no weapons

Swedish police carried out at least 1,182 searches under the country’s new security-zone powers in 2024 and 2025. Across five zones, those searches did not lead to a single seizure of a weapon or explosive.

The total comes from the police authority’s own national review. It records 424 body or vehicle searches in Hageby in Norrköping, 230 in two Södertälje districts, 178 across two zones in Eskilstuna and 350 in Varberga and Oxhagen in Örebro.

Security zones were introduced in April 2024. They allow officers to search people and vehicles inside a defined area without the concrete suspicion normally required, when police judge that there is an evident risk of a shooting or explosion connected to a conflict between criminal groups. The government’s proposal presented the power as a way to prevent serious violence before it occurs.

The power is geographical and preventive. A person can be searched because they are inside the zone, even when police do not suspect that individual of carrying a weapon. The initial decisions normally cover up to two weeks, although the Örebro zone was extended for a third. That makes the experience of residents part of the policy’s real cost, not a side issue.

The absence of seized weapons does not by itself prove that the zones achieved nothing. Police say the result was expected because announcing a zone and increasing visible police activity may deter people from carrying weapons there. The authority also says other methods are better suited to finding and seizing weapons.

In Örebro, ten people were detained during the three-week zone in connection with seven serious investigations, including suspected preparation for murder, attempted murder and aggravated arson. Police also report that no further serious violent crime occurred in any of the zones while they were active. Those are the strongest arguments for the policy: disruption and deterrence may matter even when searches find nothing.

But the same police review stops short of showing that the zones caused the calm. It says more evaluation is needed to establish whether the risk of lethal violence fell because of the work inside the zones. With only five zones in the evidence base, the authority says it remains difficult to determine the law’s effect. An external evaluation by Malmö University is under way.

The power also carries an equality question. Every search is now documented, which gives the authority a record for reviewing whether each intervention had an objective basis. Police say indirect harms such as discrimination through ethnic profiling could not be established. That finding is narrower than proof that profiling did not occur, particularly when the review cannot yet establish the broader effects of the law.

A policy intended to create safety can also weaken trust if residents experience repeated suspicion without a clear result. That risk cannot be settled by the seizure figure alone, just as the absence of new shootings cannot establish causation. Both outcomes must be examined alongside the records of whom police stopped and why.

The public test for security zones should therefore include more than whether violence stopped during a short period. It should show who was searched, on what grounds, what the searches produced and whether the same result could have been achieved with less intrusive policing. The first five zones generated 1,182 interventions and no weapon seizures. The unfinished question is what those interventions accomplished, and for whom.

DailySweden

DailySweden's desk of editors, reporters, researchers and investigative journalists. We bring readers factual, truthful and objective reporting on the issues that matter to them.

Contact the editorial desk ›