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HOMELESS

Court rules multimillion Malmö homeless housing deal illegal

A 340 million (€32m) kronor deal struck by Malmö's city government to build 133 new apartments for homeless Malmö families has been ruled illegal by the Administrative Court of Appeal in Gothenburg.

Published: 26 March 2019 08:36 CET
Court rules multimillion Malmö homeless housing deal illegal
The plot in Limnhamn where the apartments for homeless people were to be built. Photo: Google Maps
Malmö's city government awarded the contract to Skånska Strand, owned by local businessman Tommy Månsson, without any sort of public tender, sparking an immediate outcry from opposition politicians. 
 
In August, a court in Malmö ruled that the contract was illegal, as it should have been tendered out according to Sweden's Law of Public Procurement (LOU). And on Monday, the appeals court in Gothenburg backed the Malmö court's decision. 
 
“The Administrative Court in Gothenburg judges that the purpose of the deal was to produce a building,” the court's chair Åsa Ståhl said in a press release. 
 
“The municipality has exerted a deciding influence of the construction project. The contract is therefore for a public construction project. Such a contract should be tendered under LOU. The deal is therefore deemed illegal.” 
 
Malmö and Skånska Strand had structured the 20-year-deal as a lease agreement, which Andreas Schönström, the Social Democrat councillor ultimately responsible, argued at the time meant it should be exempt from Sweden's LOU law. 
 
“Those of us who were at the meeting where Schönström smirked that it didn't need any official tender are smiling more than usual today,” wrote the Moderate MP John Roslund on his Facebook page.
 
Roslund fought the deal in 2017 and last year called the contract “one of the most remarkable things I've seen in all my years as a politician”. 
 
Much of his opposition stemmed from the decision to locate the apartments in Limhamn, a relatively middle-class district of Malmö. 
 
“A nice victory for people in Limhamn today,” he wrote. “The council's attempt to destroy Limhamn with a concentration of hundreds of homeless people ended in tears.”
 
The deal had also been criticized because Månsson owns Skånska Strand through a Cyprus-based company, meaning any profits for the deal would probably not be taxed in Sweden. 
 
It is unclear whether Malmö municipality will seek to appeal the judgement to the third and final court. 

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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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