Samverkan utan ansvar? : En jämförande dokumentstudie av styrning, ansvar och uppföljning i kommunalt brottsförebyggande arbete kring barn och unga

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how collaboration concerning children and young people is constructed as a form of governance in municipal policy and steering documents, with particular focus on cooperation between schools and student health services, social services and the police. The study focuses on how collaboration is organised, how responsibility and mandate are formulated, and how follow-up is incorporated into local crime prevention work. The empirical material consists of policy and steering documents from four Swedish municipalities: Malmö, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Örebro. The study is designed as a comparative case study and uses systematic qualitative text analysis. Theoretically, the thesis draws on perspectives on governance and network governance, accountability in public administration, and management by objectives and results. The findings show that collaboration is presented as a central part of local crime prevention in all four municipalities, but that it is organised, formalised and followed up in different ways. Malmö primarily emphasises coordination within ordinary municipal structures, Stockholm organises collaboration through recurring processes such as local situational analyses and action plans, Gothenburg combines programmes, action plans, guidelines and indicators, while Örebro emphasises specific collaborative structures such as SSPF, SIG and EST. The study shows that responsibility becomes more traceable when documents connect collaboration to roles, mandates, reporting lines and follow-up requirements. At the same time, the role of schools is often formulated indirectly, or linked to specific collaborative structures rather than followed up as a separate result area. The thesis concludes that collaboration does not replace governance. Rather, collaboration becomes a form of governance that must itself be organised, assigned responsibility and followed up.