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CRIME

‘Prisons play up gang threat for funds’

The Swedish government and the police have been accused of exaggerating their successes in the fight against organised crime, and now the prison service is under scrutiny about whether it uses the situation to get more funds.

'Prisons play up gang threat for funds'

”The work hasn’t been as successful as the government and the police have portrayed it,” the newsapper Dagens Nyheter (DN) writes in its review of organised crime.

The Prison and Probation estimates that 300 out of 5,000 inmates in Sweden have links to organised crime – about 6 percent. Many of them are kept at the high security prisons such as Hall, Kumla, and Saltvik.

Yet, DN claims the prison service may be taking the reverse road to the government – instead of downplaying the gravity of the situation, they flesh it out when writing budget requests to the government.

For three years in a row, they have claimed the number of criminal gang-related inmates has gone up.

“The phrase leaves some room for interpretation,” its budget expert Håkan Andersson told DN.

Security chief Christer Isaksson said they may change the wording next year.

“It would have been more correct to say that the number of people who come from a clear criminal background and that the complexity of the average inmate’s situation have gone up,” he told DN.

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LANDSLIDE

Swedish authorities: Worker negligence behind motorway landslide

Swedish authorities said on Thursday that worker negligence at a construction site was believed to be behind a landslide that tore apart a motorway in western Sweden in September.

Swedish authorities: Worker negligence behind motorway landslide

The landslide, which struck the E6 highway in Stenungsund, 50 kilometres north of Sweden’s second-largest city Gothenburg, ripped up a petrol station car park, overturned lorries and caved in the roof of a fast food restaurant.

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Prosecutor Daniel Veivo Pettersson said on Thursday he believed “human factors” were behind the landslide as “no natural cause” had been found during the investigation.

He told a press conference the landslide had been triggered by a nearby construction site where too much excavated material had been piled up, putting excessive strain on the ground below. 

“At this stage, we consider it negligent, in this case grossly negligent, to have placed so much excavated material on the site,” Pettersson said.

Pettersson added that three people were suspected of among other things gross negligence and causing bodily harm, adding that the investigation was still ongoing.

The worst-hit area covered around 100 metres by 150 metres, but the landslide affected an area of around 700 metres by 200 metres in total, according to emergency services.

Three people were taken to hospital with minor injuries after the collapse, according to authorities.

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