A Culture of Intervention—Vagrancy and Drug Treatment in Sweden from the Late 19th Century Until Today Robert Andersson The Swedish social democratic welfare state seems to be the result of some unique historical set of circumstances. A vital condition seems to be that reform instead of revolution became the king’s way to changing society. In practice this meant that a certain set of problematizations were put to use which pointed toward the welfare state as a political solution. My interest here is how the welfare state was opened as a political arena. For AQ1 Vanessa Barker the social democratic welfare state is not the solution to “( ... ) a more just and equal penal order” (2013, p. 21). On the contrary, due to ethno-nationalism and weak constitutional traditions regarding individual rights, the Swedish welfare state has a tendency toward repressiveness against individuals deemed as “others.” But if liberal constitutions in themselves could counter punitiveness and lower imprisonment rates then the Anglo-Saxon world would not be R. Andersson (*) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 © The Author(s) 2017 P.S. Smith, T. Ugelvik (eds.), Scandinavian Penal History, Culture and Prison Practice, Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58529-5_5 99