1 Telling the Truth about Crime: The Past and Present of Swedish Criminology Robert Andersson & Roddy Nilsson Introduction What counts as criminology and how is criminological knowledge produced and assembled? We argue that criminological knowledge-production in general frame their truth as the truth when it comes to crime. We also hold that an understanding of criminology’s present stand demands an analysis of both criminology’s institutional history as well as an understanding of current events. This article should be seen as a starting-point for a discussion following this path. In what follows we analyze Swedish criminology as a case of truth-telling. Doing so we discuss three aspects as central in understanding the character of this truth-telling: the historical aspect which holds that criminology must be understood as part of larger historical events; the institutional aspect highlight how criminology and criminological knowledge relates to the circumstances it is produced under and the knowledge aspect which emphasizes how certain regimes of truth govern what counts as sciences. During its formative decades Swedish criminology had to establish a field of knowledge over which control could be established. In the same way as other academic disciplines criminology has national profiles depending on a variety of factors. In this article we will, however, restrict us to Swedish criminology. 1 Further, we limit the analysis to a discussion of the theoretical and methodological changes and continuities that the discipline has undergone during the last half-century. Talking about “criminologists” we include scholars from several different disciplines besides criminology and sociology, most importantly medicine or law. 2 In what follows we discuss what could be called “the state of Swedish criminology”. 3 We do so by pointing to a number of structural factors that help us understand the trajectory of Swedish criminology to the present day. Criminology – a science of what? Criminology is an institutional practice driven by a scientific-technical discourse aiming at controlling the production of truths around crime and criminality (cf. Dyke 1993). As such it is one of the systems of truth that defines every society and through which power is exercised, resisted and redeployed (Abbinnett 1998:124). Consequently, truth always is a truth within a particular conceptual framework (Oliver 2010:134). This also means that criminology during its history has produced a lot of different truths whose effects has been dependent on the shifts in the form and character of the actual power relations. As criminology is about exercising power upon individuals and different sectors of reality, it is involved in the production of the 1 We will not go into the large question whether there, thanks to a rising level of internationalization and even “globalization”, is a sort of “congruence” between how criminology is practised in different countries. Neither will we go into the question whether there is a specific “Nordic model” of criminology and criminal policy in the same way as there has been talk about a Nordic model of welfare. See e.g. Snaare & Bondeson 1985. This is a question we hope to come back to. 2 Departments and/or research as well as degrees in criminology have been established at several Swedish universities during the last decade. This raises the question whether this quantitative expansion also has meant a qualitative development, i.e. better and more useful results regarding the phenomenon of crime, and a larger pluralism in the field. This question will, however, not be dealt with here. 3 The criminology analyzed in this paper is strongly centered to Stockholm. There are however good reasons for this. Until the expansion of criminology as a subject matter in the 1990s, criminological knowledge production primarily took place in Stockholm.