Immigration and crime in Scandinavian countries
Go to the source page

Summary: People from other countries are over-represented in crime statistics in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. However, the overrepresentation is not uniform; crime rates vary widely by immigrant origin group, so treating "immigrants" as a single group is misleading. Non-Western immigrants, especially their descendants, are overrepresented in Danish crime statistics, even after age and gender are taken into account, and this remains constant after income is taken into account. Groups from the MENAPT region and sub-Saharan Africa account for the majority of crimes committed by people of foreign descent in Scandinavia. Western immigrants and their descendants have crime rates similar to those among natives, and sometimes even lower, including slightly lower rates of violent crime in the Danish data. In Denmark, some origin groups (e.g., Somalia, Lebanon) have violent crime rates more than 5 times higher than native Danes, even after age/gender adjustments, and more than 10 times higher than some Western/Asian origin groups. The order of immigrant groups with high and low crime rates is similar across the Nordic countries (e.g. Somalia/Iraq/Iran high, China/Filipines/UK/North America low). Age and gender composition partly explains the overrepresentation of immigrants, but leaves large gaps both between natives and immigrants and between immigrant groups. After accounting for socioeconomic factors, there are still significant differences in the crime rates of immigrant groups in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. The authors argue that the remaining differences require "stable characteristics" associated with countries of origin that persist across generations, not just local poverty or demographics. Differences in crime rates indicate little assimilation: descendants in Denmark do not have lower crime rates than immigrants, and crime rates of origin groups remain high from the first to the second generation (Denmark r=0.90, Sweden r=0.92). In Sweden, the share of organized crime is largely foreign: about 64% of identified organized criminals were of foreign origin, and the percentage was even higher in gangs/networks/syndicates. It has been reported that Swedish youth thieves are mostly foreign-born boys who attack mostly Swedish boys, with perpetrators describing it as entertainment/fun, and sometimes explicitly attacking Swedes, humiliating them and using excessive violence. Domestic violence is over-represented in foreign-origin households, including Norway, where immigrants accounted for 50% of residents accused of abusing loved ones and 62% of severe cases, and Denmark, where most women in shelters are of foreign origin. Foreign-born men are overrepresented among rape perpetrators, including in Sweden, where 63.1% of those convicted of rape (between 2000 and 2020) were foreign-born, and foreign-born men accounted for an even higher percentage of perpetrators of gang rape and aggravated rape.

Immigration Race mixing Violence Violence against women Sexual violence Negroes Arabs Economy

Comments

Be the first to comment!

Join the discussion

Please confirm that you are not a robot.