A series of illustrations for DN Lördag, including the front cover, on the theme of bureaucracy in the police force.

Politicians’ usual answer to a low clearup rate for crime is to increase funding to the police. But despite a doubling in their budget, very few more crimes are being solved. Instead the money disappears in an absurd bureaucracy of petty rules and micromanagement.

Åsa Erlandsson’s article was full of great metaphors; ‘a sinkhole’, ‘a wet blanket’, ‘feeding an insatiable elephant’, but I was inspired by a mention of Kafka. I chose to represent bureaucracy as the papers and files of an office of the past, a physical barrier blocking, slowing down and oppressing the police.

My illustrations were drawn in ink then coloured digitally.