The work against radicalization means that police employees must identify and manage individuals where there is assessed to be a future risk of ideologically motivated criminality. The work can be an important component in protecting society against terrorism, but the speculative element constitutes a complex challenge from both a security and democratic perspective. In Sweden, there is a complete lack of empirical research on the subject.

The overall purpose of the study is to explore and analyze how police employees, who have assignments related to or who in their daily work are affected by radicalization, describe radicalization as a phenomenon and depict the work of assessing and managing suspected cases of radicalization. More specifically, the study aims to investigate (1) the police employees' understanding of radicalization and the sources of knowledge this understanding is based on. Another central interest in the study is (2) assessment work in relation to radicalization. Of particular interest is how police employees describe and evaluate the work processes (=how the Police work with assessment) and risk assessment tools (=which instruments/bases structure the risk assessment work) that are possibly used in relation to individuals assessed to be at risk of or are radicalized. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate how (3) police employees describe the preventive practices they use, both in relation to local communities, groups, and individuals, to detect or prevent radicalization. Integrated into the above sub-purposes is to investigate whether police employees understand, assess, and manage radicalization to different extremist environments in different ways.