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CRIME

Number of crime victims in Sweden hits lowest level in six years

The proportion of Swedes who report being a victim of a crime has fallen for the third year in a row, bringing the share to its lowest level since at least 2016, according to the country's latest Crime Survey.

Number of crime victims in Sweden hits lowest level in six years
A police officer in place for a test in Malmö. Photo: Johan Nilsson / TT / Kod 50090

According to the Swedish Crime Survey 2022, an annual survey of some 200,000 people carried out for the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, 19.5 percent of Sweden’s adult population (16-84) reported being the victim of an “offence against the person” in 2021, a 0.7 percentage point fall on the share in 2020. 

These offences include assault, threats, sexual offences, robbery, pickpocketing, sales fraud, card/credit fraud and online harassment. 

According to the survey, the number of victims were relatively stable for “nearly all types of crime”, with only a slight increase in the fraudulent sale of goods. 

In a tweet, Sweden’s outgoing justice minister Morgan Johansson noted that the fall in sexual offences “particularly stood out”, claiming that the report’s authors described the decline as “a reversal in the trend”. 

Regarding self-reported exposure to sexual offence, 4.5 percent of the population (aged 16–84) state that they have been exposed to a sexual offence in 2021 and in 2020 the percentage was 4.6. This is a substantial decrease since 2019, where the percentage was 5.6. It has fallen every year since 2018, after increasing every year between 2011 and 2017. 

The share of adult respondents who reported being victims of an assault was 2.8 percent, the same in 2020 and 2021. This rose between 2015-2019 but has since dropped and remained the same for the past three years.

The share who reported being assaulted so severely that they needed medical treatment was stable on last year at 0.5 percent, and down from an average of 0.7 percent between 2016 and 2019. 

Member comments

  1. Hej, thank you for sharing this information. Can you clarify if ‘self reported’ means that the person in question reported the information to the police, only to the surveyors or to both? I’ve read that since those who report sexual harassment can be ‘counter sued,’ so to say, by the person or people they identified, this has had a ‘chilling effect’ on people reporting these crimes. So, I’m wondering if the outgoing justice minister performed cause analysis for the trends and change in trends. For example, is the effect of COVID 19 social distancing policies taken into account? Is that reported ‘chilling effect’ taken into account? Based on articles I’ve read even here at The Local, when people of color and/or women report crimes to the police, they demonstrate a pattern of ignoring the victims, not investigating the allegations and just letting the reports ‘time out’ so they become inactive and are dropped. Is this a trend or prevalent practice that may have had an effect on the figures in the graphs above? I really want to believe that the trend in Sweden is toward lower crime rates, but I’m also left with questions about that.

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CRIME

Illegal Swedish strawberry sales raise billions of kronor for organised crime

Swedish police have carried out raids on strawberry vendors suspected of being linked to gang crime.

Illegal Swedish strawberry sales raise billions of kronor for organised crime

Police told Dagens Nyheter that the raids were connected to one of Sweden’s most wanted gang leaders, Ismail Abdo, nicknamed Jordgubben (“The Strawberry”).

In a statement police said they had “hit a central violent actor by targeting individuals around this person and their business structures”.

Raids were carried out in Bergslagen, as well as the Mitt and Stockholm police regions.

It’s suspected that these sellers had been marketing Belgian strawberries as Swedish and using the revenue to fund serious organised crime. Police also found children under the legal working age and migrants without legal residency permits working at the stalls.

Police believe that illegal strawberry sales turn over billions of kronor every year.

“We’ve carried out multiple actions together with other authorities,” Per Lundbäck, from the Bergslagen policing region, told Swedish news agency TT. “By cutting off the finances off this type of organised crime, we can weaken gangs’ financing and their ability to carry out crimes.”

To avoid buying strawberries linked to crime, Lundbäck recommends paying attention to the company you buy your strawberries from.

“The first thing you can do is look at the number the (mobile phone payment app) Swish payment goes to, to make sure it’s a company number starting with 123, and not a private number,” he said.

Most companies will have their Swish number displayed somewhere on the stand, so you should be able to check this even if you don’t have the app and are paying with card, for example.

He also added that you can pay attention to the age of the person selling the strawberries, describing very young sellers as a “red flag”.

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