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Anti-Semitic hate crime declines in Malmö: report

Hate crimes against Jews living in Malmö, in southern Sweden, are growing less common, reported Swedish radio station SR. The number of reported crimes are less than half as many as 2009's record-high number.

Published: 17 July 2011 16:33 CEST

At the same time, racist and islamophobic crime is on the rise in Sweden’s third-largest city.

During 2009, as many as 80 anti-Semitic hate crimes, taking the form of threats, violence, graffiti and harassment in schools were reported.

The high number sparked an intense debate, and caused the Jewish organisation Simon Wiesenthal Centre to dissuade Jews from travelling to the city, warning of a high risk of harassment.

New statistics from the Skåne police force show that anti-Semitic crime decreased sharply in 2010, with 33 reported cases.

Susanne Gosenius, hate crime coordinator with the Skåne police, believes that 2009’s high figure can be explained by a few exceptional circumstances that occurred that year.

“We can see that the reports made in 2009 were derived from the events that took place in Malmö, for instance two major Israel demonstrations, and the Davis Cup, when Israel were here and played. Quite a few of the reports occurred walking to or from the demonstrations, or the Davis Cup games,” she said to SR.

While anti-Semitic crime figures are dropping, Malmö hate crimes with racist or islamophobic motives have increased sharply.

167 racist hate crimes were reported in the city in 2009. One year later the figure was 302. Over the same period, islamophobic hate crimes increased from 7 to 40 reported cases.

“My guess is that within the police we’ve become better at acknowledging them, and the media discussion that occurred the year before may have made people more likely to report crimes,” said Susanne Gosenius.

She underlines that special efforts have been made within the police force to educate about hate crimes.

“We also have special hate crime investigators, and hate crimes are a prioritized subject for us.”

Malmö’s Jewish community, while happy to see diminishing figures, continues to feel concerned about anti-Semitic sentiments in their city.

“It’s an established fact that there is an anti-Semitic current in Malmö. That hasn’t changed from one year to the next,” said Fredrik Sieradzki, spokesman for Malmö’s Jewish community, who also takes care to note that while the crimes persist, the group responsible for them is very small.

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SHOOTINGS

US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success

The US criminologist behind the anti-gang strategy designed to reduce the number of shootings and explosions in Malmö has credited the city and its police for the "utterly pragmatic, very professional, very focused" way they have put his ideas into practice.

Published: 8 March 2021 16:12 CET
US criminologist lauds Malmö for anti-gang success
Johan Nilsson/TT

In an online seminar with Malmö mayor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said implementing his Group Violence Intervention (GVI) strategy had gone extremely smoothly in the city.

“What really stands out about the Malmö experience is contrary to most of the places we work,” he said. “They made their own assessment of their situation on the ground, they looked at the intervention logic, they decided it made sense, and then, in a very rapid, focused and business-like fashion, they figured out how to do the work.”

He said that this contrasted with police and other authorities in most cities who attempt to implement the strategy, who tend to end up “dragging their feet”, “having huge amounts of political infighting”, and coming up with reasons why their city is too different from other cities where the strategy has been a success.

Malmö’s Sluta Skjut (Stop Shooting) pilot scheme was extended to a three-year programme this January, after its launch in 2018 coincided with a reduction in the number of shootings and explosions in the city.

“We think it’s a good medicine for Malmö for breaking the negative trend that we had,” Malmö police chief Stefan Sintéus said, pointing to the fall from 65 shootings in 2017 to 20 in 2020, and in explosions from 62 in 2017 to 17 in 2020.

A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of shootings from 2017 to 2020. Graph: Malmö Police
A graph from Malmö police showing the reduction in the number of explosions in the city between 2017 and 2020. Graph: Malmö Police

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In their second evaluation of the programme, published last month, Anna-Karin Ivert, Caroline Mellgren, and Karin Svanberg, three criminologists from Malmö University, reported that violent crime had declined significantly since the program came into force, and said that it was possible that the Sluta Skjut program was partly responsible, although it was difficult to judge exactly to what extent. 

The number of shootings had already started to decline before the scheme was launched, and in November 2019, Sweden’s national police launched Operation Rimfrost, a six-month crackdown on gang crime, which saw Malmö police reinforced by officers from across Sweden.

But Kennedy said he had “very little sympathy” for criminologists critical of the police’s decision to launch such a massive operation at the same time as Sluta Skjut, making it near impossible to evaluate the programme.

“Evaluation is there to improve public policy, public policy is not there to provide the basis for for sophisticated evaluation methodology,” he argued.

“When people with jobs to do, feel that they need to do things in the name of public safety, they should follow their professional, legal and moral judgement. Not doing something to save lives, because it’s going to create evaluation issues, I think, is simply privileging social science in a way that it doesn’t deserve.”

US criminologist David Kennedy partaking in the meeting. Photo: Richard Orange

Sluta Skjut has been based around so-called ‘call-ins’, in which known gang members on probation are asked to attend meetings, where law enforcement officials warn them that if shootings and explosions continue, they and the groups around them will be subject to intense focus from police.

At the same time, social workers and other actors in civil society offer help in leaving gang life.

Of the 250-300 young men who have been involved in the project, about 40 have been sent to prison, while 49 have joined Malmö’s ‘defector’ programme, which helps individuals leave gangs.

Kennedy warned not to focus too much on the number of those involved in the scheme who start to work with social services on leaving gang life.

“What we find in in practice is that most of the impact of this approach doesn’t come either because people go to prison or because they take services and leave gang life,” he said.

“Most of the impact comes from people simply putting their guns down and no longer being violent.”

“We think of the options as continuing to be extremely dangerous, or completely turning one’s life around. That’s not realistic in practice. Most of us don’t change that dramatically ever in our lives.”

He stressed the importance of informal social control in his method, reaching those who gang members love and respect, and encouraging them to put pressure on gang members to abstain from gun violence.

“We all care more about our mothers than we care about the police, and it turns out that if you can find the guy that this very high risk, very dangerous person respects – literally, you know, little old ladies will go up to him and get his attention and tell him to behave himself. And he will.”

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