February 21, 2017

A Closer Look at the Killing Fields of Sweden

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President Trump just can’t give up on Sweden:

I suppose that “beautifully” is subjective, so I won’t comment on that. But Trump is specifically talking about crime here, and a bit of googling tells me that the real target of the fear-o-sphere isn’t so much Sweden in general, but the city of Malmö, just across the sound from Copenhagen. About a third of Malmö’s population was born abroad, the highest rate in Sweden, and to listen to the right-wing media it’s basically become the Beirut of the North ever since immigrants started pouring in. “How Muslim Migration Made Malmo, Sweden A Crime Capital,” blares the Daily Wire. “Malmo, Sweden is the Most Dangerous City in Western Europe,” says Infowars, adding that it’s suffering from “soaring crime, murder.” Over in Britain, the Express puts things plainly: “SWEDEN CRUMBLING: Demands for military intervention as thugs turn Malmo into ‘no-go zone.'”

(Sorry, no links. Google ’em yourself if you really want to read this stuff.)

Luckily for the rest of us, Sweden has quite an excellent crime reporting website, helpfully offered in both Swedish and English. Here are the crime rates in recent years for Sweden’s three biggest cities:

Sadly, the laggard Swedes don’t have 2016 numbers for Malmö even though we’re a full 50 days into 2017, so this will have to do. As you can see, Malmö’s crime rate is higher than Sweden’s, which is the usual case for big cities, but generally lower than Stockholm’s. It’s been trending slightly downward over the past decade. Here’s property crime:

Malmö doesn’t look much like a hellhole, does it? Violent crime looks fairly normal for a city of its size, and it’s trending down. Property crime looks better than you might expect, and it’s trending distinctly down. For a longer-term look at things, here are the total number of murders in Sweden over the past 50 years:

I suppose you all recognize this shape from my hundreds of posts about lead and crime, right? In any case, it’s been trending steadily downward since 1990 while the number of immigrants has been steadily rising. Drilling down, the murder rate between 1991-2014 in Skåne county, which includes Malmö, has stayed flat. However, the murder rate in Malmö itself has nearly doubled in the past two years, increasing from about seven murders in 2014 to twelve in 2016.

Why? Gang wars. This is also the reason Malmö has been the victim of a surprising number of hand grenade attacks lately. Apparently they’re leftovers from the Balkan wars that are smuggled into Sweden and used by rival drug gangs in their turf wars. There’s no question that gang wars fought with hand grenades and handguns are the kind of thing that could put people on edge, but these gangs have been around for a long time and it’s unclear what’s caused the recent surge in turf wars. It might be related to the influx of immigrants, but since immigrants have been moving to Malmö for years, while the gang wars have increased in just the last two, that seems a bit of a stretch.

All this said, Malmö’s overall crime rate, both violent and property, has been pretty flat for the past decade, and the murder rate has been flat for the past three decades. All this has happened while the immigrant population in Malmö has increased more than tenfold.

So that leaves us with the recent gang wars, which have caused an uptick in murders over just the past couple of years. That’s it. If you cherry pick a single city with a sudden upsurge in gang warfare, and then assume it’s all the fault of immigrants, then Sweden becomes the poster child for immigrants and crime. But that’s a pretty thin case.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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