Construction of culprits within criminal policy programs: A critical discourse analysis. The purpose of this study was to make visible discourses within criminal policy before the elections of 2018 through analysis of the established political parties ́ criminal policy programs. Method qualitative content analysis was used to bring out categories, later analysed with Fairclough ́s critical discourse analysis. Constructions of culprits as “foreigner”, “in gang”, “organized”, “young”, “male” and “non-ethical Swedish” emerged. Other groups were crime victims identified as “children”, “juveniles”, “elders”, “females” and “entrepreneurs/business owners”. The crimes observed were honor crimes, terrorism, crimes of violence (especially domestic violence), sexual offences and internet-based crime. The constructions may create a skewed interpretation of criminality and feelings of “us and them”. This may lead to “them” labelled as the criminals and “us” as their potential victims. The discourses in the programs therefore risk sustaining unequal power configurations in society.