According to “The History of Sweden” (2015), the area now known as Sweden started to become widely populated around 8,000 B.C., but it wasn’t founded as a kingdom until 1280 by King Magnus Ladulas. Sweden was ruled solely by a monarchy until 1718 when the country was defeated in the Great Northern War. At this time, the Swedish parliament—Riksdag—had enough power to pass a new constitution that got rid of royal absolutism and instead gave all of the control to the Riksdag. This was changed in 1974 when the current constitution was passed. This new constitution gave the power to the people, allowing them to be able to vote of members of parliament in free elections. Although the monarch is still the head of the state, it is in name only (“History …show more content…
Hendy also provided a data set taken from multiple interviews with police officers that were involved in 77 shootings in Sweden between 1985 and 2004. Of these shootings, 45% resulted in shots being fired directly at the offender—35% effective in hitting their target, with 10% being classified as warning shots. During this study, Hendy found that 82% of the shots were cited as self-defense. Of these 77 shootings, 56% were done before the officer was mentally prepared to shoot. In 37% of the incidents the officers reacted in a panicked state, but this rose to 47% if the officer believed that they shot in self-defense. Half of the officers who panicked fired the first shot within three seconds of assessing the initial threat. Out of this 50%, 42% of those shots were fired within three meters of the offender (Hendy, …show more content…
In fact, Sweden rarely sentences anyone of any age to life in prison at all. If they do, the inmate rarely serves over eighteen years. As stated previously, in 2007, a grand total of 159 inmates were sentenced to life. A startling difference can be seen when looking at the same data for the U.S. According to Nicole Flatow, there were around 160,000 inmates serving life sentences in the United States in 2013. Of these, 49,081 are serving life without the possibility of parole. Nearly half of the inmates serving life with a possibility of parole are African American, 10,000 were convicted for nonviolent offenses, and a staggering 10,000 inmates were sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes they committed before the age of 18. One in four of the inmates sentenced at 18 are serving life with no chance of parole (Flatow, 2013). One of the main attributors to Sweden’s lower inmate population is just simply their desire to help over their desire to incapacitate. The United States veers in the completely opposite direction by taking a “tough on crime” stance, and sadly, it