The Sture Bergwall scandal has shone a bright light on forensic psychiatric care. Influential actors such as the Swedish Research Council have emphasized the necessity for ensuring that forensic psychiatric care is based on science and proven experience. As a result, research programmes are being widely introduced in care settings characterized by a high degree of complexity, goal-oriented conflicts between care and societal protection, and a plurality of professions. This joint project aims to build institutional capacity for sustainable and nuanced incorporation of research and evidence-based practices in a forensic psychiatric care unit.

An organization’s preparedness and willingness to embrace heterogenous epistemologies and practices is key to developing research and evidence-basing. The project takes a comprehensive approach by mapping aspects of forensic psychiatric care that risk getting overlooked in a regular institutional- and knowledge hierarchy, while simultaneously examining frames of meaning inherent in the ongoing research. The study is thus designed to lay bare research- as well as care practices and articulate logics, knowledge perspectives and priorities that shape and sometimes collide in daily routines. Document analysis, interviews and participant observation are combined to discern knowledge and practices that constitute everyday care in forensic psychiatric settings, and render visible basic assumptions that structure research- as well care work.