The aim of this study is to examine the Swedish population's attitudes about the causes behind violence in society, and how these attitudes influence their position on criminal policy proposals. By analyzing underlying dimensions of attitudes towards the causes of violence and how political ideology, political interest, media consumption and social capital relate to these dimensions, and their impact on criminal policy proposals. The findings show that ideology, and partly social capital, play a significant role in shaping attitudes towards the cause behind violence in society. Individuals on the right-wing tend to explain violence with immigrants, whereas those on the left-wing tend to explain it with social vulnerability and media culture. Additionally, people with higher social capital tend to focus on social issues rather than blaming media culture or immigration. The results also show that those who consider media culture and immigration to be important factors for the causes behind violence in society, tend to support criminal policy proposals such as limiting democracy to deal with crime, toughener punishment for gang crime and deporting non-citizens convicted of violent crimes. Those who associate social vulnerability and home, and education with the cause of violence, also tend to have negative attitudes towards punitive policy proposals. These insights deepen the understanding of how different factors shape people's perceptions of violence and criminal policy in Sweden.

’Inspection-zones’ are political proposals that the Sweden democrats, Christian democrats and the Moderate parties have put on their agendas for the purpose of combating the gang-related crime in Sweden’s so called ‘vulnerable areas’ since 2017. The proposals entail that the police receive extended powers to, within a geographically defined area, stop and frisk people without being required to provide a reasonable suspicion of individuals committing any crimes, which is something that today works as a protection-mechanism against arbitrary interventions. The purpose of this essay is to analyze, using a critical discourse analysis as a method, how the discourse of ‘inspection-zones’ is constructed by the political parties behind the proposals and which discourses are applied to legitimize the proposals. Furthermore, the purpose is to analyze how racist power-relations are implied within the proposals. The essay is delimited to the aforementioned parties’ latest motions in the Swedish parliament and a party leader debate where the proposals were discussed. The theoretical framework consists of a perspective on how racist discourses can change and still be considered a uniform discourse, and a perspective on how white racism can be reproduced through new discursive means. Conclusions observe that the construction of ‘inspection-zones’ as a discourse is primarily articulated by the parties around gang-related crime. The discourse around gang-related crime is articulated through shootings and organized crime, which legitimizes the proposals, since these are problems that reasonable people would like to prevent. However, the conclusions also shows that a racist ‘Swedishness’-discourse by the parties is implied within the discourse of gang-related crime, making the collective basic characteristics for ‘Swedishness’ an assessment-basis by which gang-related criminality can be expected from people. To direct the focus of ‘inspection-zones’ towards ‘vulnerable areas’ that are already rich in immigrant density, combined with the construction of this racist discourse, also seems to raise the risks of racial profiling and discriminatory practices against non-white ethnic minorities – a result that the Danish people have experienced after a similar legislation was introduced in Denmark.