At Stockholm university research is, and has been, carried out, among other things, on how the development of criminal policy in Sweden should be explained, how the drug policy appears in historic and comparative perspective, which ideologies and interests that cause the particular focus on drugs in the police, the historic and present-day role of emotions in individual and political reactions to crime, the expansion of surveillance and he relative immunity against punishment of groups with power.
An important field in criminal policy is the research subject named the sociology of punishment. Criminal policy is within this frame of reference analysed against the background of penal ideologies, group conflict, culture, general politics, etc.

