I posted a story yesterday about the way in which Swedish attitudes to immigration have changed, in part because of the link between mass immigration and a crime problem of a nature and extent once unimaginable in the country. As I mentioned, this connection is now being discussed with a bluntness that was once taboo.
The Financial Times (November 2023):
In a televised address at the end of September, Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden, offered his diagnosis for the unprecedented violence, directly blaming “irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration”.
“I cannot over-emphasise the seriousness of the situation,” added the leader of the centre-right Moderate party. “Sweden has never seen anything like it before. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like it.”
Much of the focus on crime has been on the country’s growing problem with gangs. According to the FT, “criminal gangs across the country are evolving beyond the drug trade. Growing evidence suggests these networks have infiltrated some public services, political parties and even the criminal justice system.”
Another twist is that the gangs have been taking advantage of Sweden’s light sentencing practices when it comes to young people convicted of a crime. Two 17-year-olds found guilty of involvement in powerful explosions in Stockholm last year received ten months apiece in youth homes.
This then adds a further twist to the story, per the FT:
Police say gangs are actively recruiting vulnerable young people from within these care homes, known in Sweden as Hem för vård eller boende, or HVB. “We know that HVB can increase the problem, not be the solution,” says Ola Jerimiasen, chief of staff for social services in Uppsala.
Pelling, the mayor, says that many of the people arrested for recent killings in the area are not from Uppsala, but young “hitmen” sent to the city.
Sweden’s Danish neighbors have been paying attention. Travel between the two countries has long been easy, with flights and ferry rides more recently supplemented by the (impressive) Öresund Bridge, which connects the two. Sweden is now a quick train or car ride away from Copenhagen. From Copenhagen’s airport there are taxis that will take you to Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city.
The Financial Times (August 9):
Denmark will strengthen its border controls with neighbouring Sweden after a surge in shootings in Copenhagen involving Swedish teenagers. Peter Hummelgaard, Denmark’s justice minister, said on Friday that police would increase their inspections on trains across the iconic Øresund bridge…and use more resources to monitor car traffic on the road crossing.
“We are increasing surveillance, in part to increase security, but also to prevent hired Swedish child soldiers who come to Copenhagen to carry out tasks in connection with gang conflicts,” he added.
Hummelgaard revealed on Thursday that there had been 25 incidents since April where Danish criminal gangs had hired what he called “child soldiers” to commit crimes in Denmark. In the last two weeks alone, Danish police have linked three shootings to Swedish teenagers.
Denmark began taking a tougher line on immigration and gang crime long before its Swedish neighbors, partly because of the rise of the populist Danish People’s Party, which for long stretches, in the first two decades of this century, supported minority center-right governments. The DPP has, however, lost ground in recent years, in part because under Mette Frederiksen, the Social Democrats, the leading party on Denmark’s center-left, have taken a sharp turn away from the party’s traditionally more permissive approach to immigration.
Frederiksen has been prime minister since 2019.
There’s a lesson there.