After corona - fewer new police officers

The goal is to fill all places in police training. But the latest forecast suggests that roughly one in four places will be empty when new police students begin their training this fall.

-I think we come up with over 700 adopted, says Damberg.

The latest figures from the recruitment authority show that 641 passed the exam and chose to begin training this fall.

Before the current spring term, 651 applicants passed the requirements and were offered one of the 1,020 training places.

Damberg had high hopes for admissions to the fall education. The reason is that a new more flexible application process is now fully implemented. Before the applicant's trials were stopped in March, for the first time, the number of applicants seemed to reach a thousand.

In the new application process, you can register your application at any time during the year, choose different days for the different tests and choose the start of the education three semesters ahead. In addition, the "first come, first served" principle applies to the choice of study site.

Now the trial business is gaining momentum again. From June 8, both probation offices will be open to residents in 14 of 21 counties.

Although many educational places will have been empty during 2020, Damberg expects that the government's long-term goal of more police will be achieved.

"I'm optimistic," he says.

The number of training places has tripled from 300 in spring 2016 to just over a thousand now. Damberg believes that those places will be filled from 2021.

The government's target means that the number of police employees will increase by 10,000 during the period 2016-2024, to just over 38,000.

"The police authority is ahead of its own forecast in terms of growth towards 10,000 more employees," says Damberg.

Last April this year, according to government figures, the number of police employees had increased by 4,194 compared to the first of January 2016. Of these, however, only 451 police officers, the rest were civilian employees.

-This is how it must be when you start such a growth journey. It takes several years to train a new police officer, Damberg says.

He also points out that more police officers who have quit now are being recruited and that fewer are quitting than before.

Interest in becoming a police officer has set a record in recent years. Prior to this year's spring term, 17,500 applied for police training and just over 6,500 were called for trial. Of these, just under 3,500 came, of which only 651 passed the requirements and were offered space.

-The police face a tougher everyday life and several different challenges at work. We must have a well-trained police officer, which is why I do not want to lower the requirements, says Damberg.