11 ms·

Beware of the political spin! Note that while the number of inmates plummets, the number of crimes committed is higher than ever. This is a failure of the poli

Beware of the political spin! Note that while the number of inmates plummets, the number of crimes committed is higher than ever. This is a failure of the police and the justice system and not a success story. Nearly 95 percent of violent crimes and robberies committed in Sweden go unsolved, and an individual police officer solves an average of three crimes per year. http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15412 http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15412

csmuk 13y ago
Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left their tools in the car when disturbed and the police said they found "no evidence". Was resolved for a small fee by a private "individual" who knew who they were.
- draugadrotten 13y ago
  To be fair, the supreme court have also taken on itself to change the sentencing. The lack of inmates could be because of a change in 2010. [Edit: the effects of which, are seen now] Most inmates serving 10+ years in Swedish prisons are drug related cases. In 2010, the Swedish supreme court decided to dramatically change the policy regarding punishment for drug trafficking. What was previously a 14-year prison sentence suddenly became a 4 year crime. [Update: Prisoners sentenced in 2010 would previosly have been staying in prison for 10+ years but after the change they are now released in 2013 for good behaviour.] http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fokus.se%2F2011%2F09%2Fstraffrabatt-i-knarkdomar%2F&act=url http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev...
  - gnerd 13y ago
    Also important to note is in Sweden there is no drug scheduling system like there would be in the Anglo countries. If one were to sell or move a lot of cannabis, it would be the same as selling or moving a lot or heroin or crystal meth. For small amounts of anything, there are no custodial sentences but the fine will be about half of your monthly salary (or approximately £50 if you have no job). I have heard anecdotal cases of houses/flats being raided on nothing more than simple suspicion because someone seemed sleepy or had red eyes.
    - pimeys 13y ago
      Also happens in Finland. If the police catches you smoking a joint in a park, they will raid your house in most cases. There must be something for them to find, to protect you and to protect the society...
- tluyben2 13y ago
  That sounds kind of like the EU countries I've lived in / been to; unless the police is standing next to the crime happening nothing much happens. And that is not just (just, because it is of course) populist talk; it happens a lot. People point out the crime, have images, videos on their phones and the police makes a nice report; you'll never hear about it again. I had it in Spain. I understand the vigilante crap even if you didn't get hurt; you feel so powerless sitting at the police giving them pics, fingerprints, number plate and make of the getaway car while they are just nodding writing all down and putting it in a drawer knowing they won't do anything.
  - IanCal 13y ago
    As a counter point, I was mugged a couple of years back, and reported it after blocking my phone, etc. expecting a "Well there's not much we can do". The police arrived within 10 minutes and took a statement. Since I'd seen one of the guys beforehand throwing a beer can at a car, they drove me back to that spot and we found the can. They got DNA from it and found out who it was, caught them and they were found guilty (they also picked me up & dropped me off when I needed to do a video lineup). I then had victim support offer counselling & general contact and was updated with how things were going by post. They were absolutely excellent as far as I'm concerned, particularly for a fairly minor crime (I was threatened but not actually hit) in a major city (Manchester in the UK, specifically Salford at the time).
    - tluyben2 13y ago
      Good to hear it can be different! I understand they cannot do this kind of thing every time, but at least learn some bedside manners and comfort the victim. I mean; they see muggings etc every day, but making me feel it's just normal and no-one cares is the bad thing EVEN if they don't do anything. If they actually get DNA/prints and use them, that rocks.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Here in Portugal, my brother left his cellphone unattended and someone took it. We filled a claim with the cops (mostly for insurance purposes) and they got it back after a month or so, without so much as a description of the person who took it (I believe they got an address from the carrier). Of course, this is just anecdotal.
- cones688 13y ago
  Did you raise this with the IPCC[0]? [0]http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/ http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/
  - csmuk 13y ago
    No - that's purely a form of idealism. At best you'll get an apology from the police which isn't worth the effort.
    - anon1385 13y ago
      Additionally, don't make a complaint about the police unless you fully understand what you are getting yourself into. There is a reasonable chance that they will harass you and your family until they can find some reason to arrest you (or they may just arrest you for no reason). http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/11/police-vendetta-lawyer-awarded-damages http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/11/police-vendetta-la... A defence solicitor who was awarded £550,000 in damages from a police force after he was wrongly arrested says officers mounted a vendetta against him after one of his clients was acquitted. James Watson said Cleveland police officers spent three years pursuing him, costing millions of pounds, without finding any evidence against him, before admitting a series of mistakes.
      - csmuk 13y ago
        Yeah that's about right. It's about the arrests, not the crimes.
- atlantic 13y ago
  I had a friend in Belgium who was raped in the street one evening by three young men. The police did not take much interest. There was no medical examination done. They said they would call her back to look at some pictures but they never did. I've fought off muggers several times over the years. I've never bothered to call the police, especially as the actions taken in self-defence might themselves constitute a crime. Despite all the hype in the cinema, my general impression is that policemen are basically bureaucrats carrying guns, not too different from teachers or bus drivers.
  - agumonkey 13y ago
    I know it's quite a jump, but it reminds me of the video of the baby being run on by a car while nobody cared. Some people said being involved could be misinterpreted by the police causing you to be jailed or worse.
  - berntb 13y ago
    I've lived in Sweden and Finland. That sounded more like Sweden. In Finland the police is trusted and appreciated. Among the most trusted civic functions in interviews, afaik.
- forktheif 13y ago
  Crime rates are lower than they've been in a long time. And the reason we know they are, is the crime survey. The crime survey telephones a bunch of random people and asks them if they've been a victim of crime in the past 12 months. The number of people reporting they're a victim of crime has been dropping since the late 90s.
- madaxe 13y ago
  The police are there to: - Do you for speeding. - Protect the establishment. - Threaten violence. - Prop up the prison-industrial complex for the benefit of private corporations. They are categorically not there to help you. They never have been. This is a misapprehension that has been around since the days of Peel. A police force is the state's visible threat of violence against its populace, in order to exact control and to keep the powerful powerful.
  - csmuk 13y ago
    Agree entirely. I've learned this over the last few years.
  - marvin 13y ago
    This is not how a democratic nation is supposed to work. So please don't hold up this characterization of the police as something which is inevitable. The democratic ideal is that the police have a national monopoly on the legal use of violence, and the use of this violence is dictated by the laws and the courts. This is how well-working democratic nations work, and it is indeed how the police force in my home country works. That anything else can be said about the USA today (maybe also the UK?), is just a testament to the scale of the democratic problems you guys have. You are really deep into it, and it doesn't seem like you realize the extent of the problem.
    - csmuk 13y ago
      It is inevitable. Every society has descended into this so far, until there is a revolution. Us people in the UK realise what is happening. At some point, the moment will occur when the state oversteps the mark on something and the shit will get flipped country-wide.
      - madaxe 13y ago
        Yup, just said the same as you. Hobbes and Hayek both anticipated this. Revolution is the only way out.
barry-cotter 13y ago
Is there an equivalent of the Danish People's Party or the beginnings of something similar? Someone to move the Overton window to the right?
- Svip 13y ago
  Sverigedemokraterna?
  - mnsc 13y ago
    That question mark is not needed. Sverigedemokraterna is very much in the same vein as the Danish People's Party and currently rates at about 10% in opinion surveys. They haven't changed the Overton Window very much since all other parties have a pretty solid front of not supporting Sverigedemokraterna but they most certainly have shifted the window a bit to the right.
    - mjn 13y ago
      I think they're a bit different from Dansk Folkeparti (DF), mostly in having considerably more questionable roots, which I would guess doesn't help their acceptance in the party mainstream. They have made an effort to clean up their image in the past few years, expelling a number of the extreme-right elements, but the party's roots in the far-right scene makes them a bit anathema to respectable society. The origins of the party, and much of their '80s and early-'90s crowd, came out of the "subcultural right", movements like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevara_Sverige_Svenskt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevara_Sverige_Svenskt, norse-pride and white-power metal bands, the motorcycle club scene, etc. When Mikael Jansson defected from the Center Party and took over Sweden Democrats in 1995 he began a purge of the openly extreme-right elements of the party in order to turn it into a respectable anti-immigration movement, but it didn't really solidify until the past few years. Even in recent years they have had a struggle to keep those types out of the party, for example their youth leader from 2007-2010 (Erik Almqvist) was embarrassingly videotaped singing white-power music at a retreat, and was finally forced out of the party earlier this year (weirdly, for someone who opposes immigration, he reportedly emigrated to Hungary after resigning). DF by contrast has different origins, culturally rooted in something more like old-person Danish culture, rather than youth radical-right culture. They have a vaguely mythologized idea of 19th-century or early-20th-century Danish culture, as they imagine one's grandfather in a small town in Jutland might have lived. They generally therefore view the radical right-wing scene as negative, as equally a deviation from traditional quiet Danish values as immigrant crime is. This has let them keep those elements out of the party more credibly, because it's not only for image that they do it, but because their base actually culturally dislikes the far-right (especially anyone associated with the metal or biker scenes, who they see as culturally un-Danish). Not that I myself would vote for DF (as an immigrant in Denmark they aren't out to make life easier for me), but I somewhat understand their appeal better; they are more of a rural "traditionalist values" party than a radical nationalist party. I find it harder to understand how SD would get similar support, unless people either don't realize their association with the far-right subculture, really believe that their transformation is completed, or are just lodging protest votes.
belorn 13y ago
Thats what happen when politics start to dictate priorities for the police. A large group of the police force and prosecutor have been dedicated to hunt down file sharing. An other group is dedicated to maintain the national firewall. Others deal with hunting down all those 16 years old kids who "hacks" websites with DDOS. This failure of the police and the justice system has very little to do with the police, and all to do with the current politics. Going for 5% to 10% solved cases in violent crimes and robberies would simply not be as political attractive as getting that 16 year old sentenced.
- ptr 13y ago
  It's also what happens when bureaucracy takes over, putting the officers in the office most of the day.
- madaxe 13y ago
  Politicians have always run the police - a police force is the government's visible threat of violence and method of control over the population. They're not there to protect you. They're there to protect the establishment.
  - aet 13y ago
    Next time you call the police. Please recite that little speech to the responding officer.
    - madaxe 13y ago
      "Responding officer"? You mean, the phone drone whose job it is to go "sir, burglary is a civil matter, you will need to pursue it yourself"? Already have.
      - patmcc 13y ago
        If you live somewhere where the police literally tell you "burglary is a civil matter", you need to either start a revolution or move to a civilized country.
vidarh 13y ago
I find it amusing that you warn of the political spin, yet cite as facts and link to an article that cites a "study" done for a TV show with no specifics about methods used or classification criteria given. Why should we assign any more trust to just those numbers?
- draugadrotten 13y ago
  I presented an english-language article talking about the topic. What I care about here is that the law enforcement should get better IRL. I don't care at all if you "trust" anything here, faceless HN user vidarh.I simply presented a fact for you to use or ignore. There's quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden, however they are in Swedish. Public service radio, just to pick one: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=5691590 http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artik... I'm sure you know how to use google to find more of the same. Have fun and please share the truth if you find it out there.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    I'm Norwegian, so the Swedish article is not a problem. The Swedish article you linked presents a far more nuanced picture and gives even more reasons to question the other link you gave. It does not say anything about the number of crimes committed, so we can't really used this one to look at that. But it does on the other give a number of possible explanations for why the percentage of "solved" crimes dropped, though notably the article only refers to a drop versus the same period the previous year - it says nothing about longer term trends. However what it says is interesting: * The number of particularly complicated crimes, such as IT related crimes, have risen, though it gives no numbers. This claim is so fuzzy that it doesn't really tell us much, unfortunately. * The police have reduced their focus on traffic related crimes, which includes a lot of easy to solve crimes. E.g. frequent traffic-stops will "net" a lot of crimes that are instantly solved at the same time as you identify the crime. By catching people drunk driving, or driving too fast, for example. Whether or not this change is good or bad really depends on whether it coincides with more accidents etc. If it doesn't, then one might argue the police and legislative have been overzealous about this in the past. * In terms of drug related crimes, enforcement has shifted from users to dealers. "Solving" drug crimes is much easier when it involves going around and hassling vulnerable, highly visible addicts - where again the crime will be registered mainly if it is solved at the same time, by catching someone with drugs, - vs. tracking down dealers. Some of us would say this shift is distinctly positive even though it makes the numbers look worse. * At the same time the article points out that numbers for some crimes that have a much more direct effect on the general public, such robberies of homes and, as a follow on, resale of stolen property, have improved. So many of the crimes they have de-emphasised which previously scored them many easily solved crimes, are victim-less crimes or have no direct victims, and it is not clear that the reduction in solved crimes there is a problem at all. The shift in enforcement especially when it comes to drugs is in line with international shifts in attitudes. The freed up resources have seemingly been funnelled into crimes that have more serious effects on the general public, but which require more resources - such as the effort to identify key individuals tied to break-ins etc. and following them up intensively. This has been done specifically in response to policy decisions by the government, that have asked for a focus on these types of more complex crimes, and so gives even less reason to justify any claim about "abysmal Police work". No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes, nor any idea of massively rising crime. It doesn't disprove it either - it is largely orthogonal to the original claims. I wish I had time to dig around, but I don't. I do find it interesting that you chose this article to illustrate, though, if there's "quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden", as it doesn't really address the issues.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
Talking of political spin, you can usually tell when someone is trying to twist facts to make them seem more interesting. They combine things that don't really go together and put the worst one first e.g. "violent crimes and robberies". You might think, no they're talking about "violent crimes" and "violent robberies" yet the police chief is quoted as saying: " When it comes to theft, there are no witnesses, and victims often don’t know when the crime occurred." So unless these victims are so viciously beaten by muggers that they get amnesia it seems more likely to be non-violent thefts. If the violent crimes are really that bad then why not present their stats alone?
- maxerickson 13y ago
  In the US, theft and robbery are classified separately. One of the distinguishing characteristics is that robbery generally involves force or the threat of force to take something.
  - jeltz 13y ago
    Same for in Sweden.
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      Wikipedia says robbery, assault and sexual assault ("contact crimes") together made up 12% of reported crimes in 2003 Sweden. Theft related were 53%. The article claims that in 2007 Sweden "violent crimes and robberies make up about 75 percent of all crimes reported in Sweden." I'd say they've conflated theft and robbery in that article, possibly a translation issue, possibly fear mongering. (edit: and this is backed up by the link to the official stats given elsewhere in the thread by Xylakant which has robbery as less than 1% of reported crimes in 2012)
      - vidarh 13y ago
        That's particularly likely given the quote where the national police chief is quoted as talking about thefts.
mtgx 13y ago
Or maybe there are more laws criminalizing people that the police themselves thinks are ridiculous and they aren't executing them?
angularly 13y ago
Yeah I must admit the op article seems to be pure political spin. You can read in the official statistics that number of crimes have absolutely exploded in Sweden since 1975: http://www.d-intl.com/2013/11/08/dramatisk-okning-av-valdsbrotten-i-mangkulturella-sverige/ http://www.d-intl.com/2013/11/08/dramatisk-okning-av-valdsbr... It seems to me they should in fact rapidly increase the numbe of prisons, if they want to protect people.
- darkbot 13y ago
  d-intl.com is run by a bunch of paranoid and outright crazy neo-fascist. It's extremely racist and have close ties to the Norwegian terrorist Ander Bering Breivik as well as to the violent English Defence League(EDL). It's not by any means a decent source for anything.
  - angularly 13y ago
    Well thats just like your opinion, and not true at all. The problem in Sweden is the same as in Denmark only worse. The media is controlled by leftists to a degree that almost no rightwing views are ever presented. In Denmark 80% of journalists vote to the left, and we only have one or two papers who present the 55% of the population who vote on the right wing. The same is true in Sweden only worse.
    - darkbot 13y ago
      d-intl.com/Tryckfrihetssällskapet have on numerous occasions invited EDL (now former) leader Stephen "Tommy Robinson" Yaxley-Lennon to speech at rallies and meetings. That's a fact. Your other statements are the typical Swedish right-wing conspiracy theory and slur that has no correlation with reality.
      - angularly 13y ago
        I dont know about Sweden, but in Denmark, it has been documentet many times, that about 80% of the journalists are left wing. Any way I got a bit off track here. The subject at hand is that number of prisons are being reduced, while the number of crimes are exploding through the roof according to the official statistics. And that just seems a bit odd to say the least.
Xylakant 13y ago
Beware of the political spin! The article cited is from 2008 and so nearly five years outdated. The rise has stalled and the trend has been reversing with a slight decline of 1% in 2012 [1]. The biggest problem I see is that the the article glosses over the reasons for such a change. There are multiple reasons why crime statistics change, some merely methodological, but chief among them are two factors: * Changes in criminal law, classifying new kinds of behavior as a crime or decriminalizing some behavior. (Hello Marihuana legalization!) * Willingness to report a crime. What used to be a run in among adolescents is nowadays often reported as a violent crime. Any kind of rape or sexual molestation used to be such a stigma on the victim that they were (and still often are) not reported. Same goes for the rate of solved crimes: A figure of "6%" just glosses over the details. It seems low, but what's more interesting is which crimes get solved. Bike theft has a notoriously low rate of solving the crime (1%) [2] and is very common in some regions, skewing statistics. Same for petty theft. Drug abuse is often reported as a crime. There's no chance to ever solving such crimes on a significant level. Also, how does "6%" compare to the years before? Better? Same? Less? So be weary when reading and citing those articles. Usually, if only one figure gets cited, you're being mislead. [1] http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/crime-statistics/reported-offences.html http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti... [2] http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/bicycle-theft.html http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti...
- draugadrotten 13y ago
  I love your source. >The rise has stalled and the trend has been reversing with a slight decline of 1% in 2012 [1]. From your source: "Since 2003, the number of reported offences has increased by approximately 147,000 (+12%). Since 1975, the trend in the total number of reported offences has been characterised by a continuous increase." That a 1% decrease in the statistics of a single year represent any significant change in the trend since 1975 remains to be seen. I'm very skeptical but I will be very happy if it turns out to be true.
  - hobbe80 13y ago
    Between 2003 and 2013, the Swedish population grew by 7.8%, which should be taken into account when looking at absolute numbers of reported crimes.
jeltz 13y ago
> Research carried out by TV4’s Kalla Fakta (‘Cold Facts’) investigative news programme also revealed that violent crimes and robberies make up about 75 percent of all crimes reported in Sweden. Those numbers are bullshit. If we look at Brå's statistics (http://www.bra.se/download/18.22a7170813a0d141d21800063138/1364906629361/Total_number_of_reported_offences_2012.xls.xls http://www.bra.se/download/18.22a7170813a0d141d21800063138/1...) we see that: Total crimes 2012: 1156390 Other+petty theft: 317869 27.5% Vandalism: 152345 13.2% Fraud: 129063 11.2% -- Robbery: 9213 0.8%
runarb 13y ago
Solved in such statistics may not mean what many thinks it means. Crimes where the perpetrator is known, but there is not enough evidence to take him to court are also often counted as solved. At least here in Norway (neighbor country to Sweden), of the solved cases, about half was reported by the police itself. That normally mean that the police caught one in the act, or was them self the victim of the crime (the defendant resisted arrest, attacked or threatened a police officer etc.). So if you are a victim of a crime, and no police officer witnesses it, it isn't very likely that the perpetrator get punished.

csmuk 13y ago

Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left their tools in the car when disturbed and the police said they found "no evidence". Was resolved for a small fee by a private "individual" who knew who they were.

draugadrotten 13y ago
To be fair, the supreme court have also taken on itself to change the sentencing. The lack of inmates could be because of a change in 2010. [Edit: the effects of which, are seen now] Most inmates serving 10+ years in Swedish prisons are drug related cases. In 2010, the Swedish supreme court decided to dramatically change the policy regarding punishment for drug trafficking. What was previously a 14-year prison sentence suddenly became a 4 year crime. [Update: Prisoners sentenced in 2010 would previosly have been staying in prison for 10+ years but after the change they are now released in 2013 for good behaviour.] http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fokus.se%2F2011%2F09%2Fstraffrabatt-i-knarkdomar%2F&act=url http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev...
- gnerd 13y ago
  Also important to note is in Sweden there is no drug scheduling system like there would be in the Anglo countries. If one were to sell or move a lot of cannabis, it would be the same as selling or moving a lot or heroin or crystal meth. For small amounts of anything, there are no custodial sentences but the fine will be about half of your monthly salary (or approximately £50 if you have no job). I have heard anecdotal cases of houses/flats being raided on nothing more than simple suspicion because someone seemed sleepy or had red eyes.
  - pimeys 13y ago
    Also happens in Finland. If the police catches you smoking a joint in a park, they will raid your house in most cases. There must be something for them to find, to protect you and to protect the society...
tluyben2 13y ago
That sounds kind of like the EU countries I've lived in / been to; unless the police is standing next to the crime happening nothing much happens. And that is not just (just, because it is of course) populist talk; it happens a lot. People point out the crime, have images, videos on their phones and the police makes a nice report; you'll never hear about it again. I had it in Spain. I understand the vigilante crap even if you didn't get hurt; you feel so powerless sitting at the police giving them pics, fingerprints, number plate and make of the getaway car while they are just nodding writing all down and putting it in a drawer knowing they won't do anything.
- IanCal 13y ago
  As a counter point, I was mugged a couple of years back, and reported it after blocking my phone, etc. expecting a "Well there's not much we can do". The police arrived within 10 minutes and took a statement. Since I'd seen one of the guys beforehand throwing a beer can at a car, they drove me back to that spot and we found the can. They got DNA from it and found out who it was, caught them and they were found guilty (they also picked me up & dropped me off when I needed to do a video lineup). I then had victim support offer counselling & general contact and was updated with how things were going by post. They were absolutely excellent as far as I'm concerned, particularly for a fairly minor crime (I was threatened but not actually hit) in a major city (Manchester in the UK, specifically Salford at the time).
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    Good to hear it can be different! I understand they cannot do this kind of thing every time, but at least learn some bedside manners and comfort the victim. I mean; they see muggings etc every day, but making me feel it's just normal and no-one cares is the bad thing EVEN if they don't do anything. If they actually get DNA/prints and use them, that rocks.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Here in Portugal, my brother left his cellphone unattended and someone took it. We filled a claim with the cops (mostly for insurance purposes) and they got it back after a month or so, without so much as a description of the person who took it (I believe they got an address from the carrier). Of course, this is just anecdotal.
cones688 13y ago
Did you raise this with the IPCC[0]? [0]http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/ http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/
- csmuk 13y ago
  No - that's purely a form of idealism. At best you'll get an apology from the police which isn't worth the effort.
  - anon1385 13y ago
    Additionally, don't make a complaint about the police unless you fully understand what you are getting yourself into. There is a reasonable chance that they will harass you and your family until they can find some reason to arrest you (or they may just arrest you for no reason). http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/11/police-vendetta-lawyer-awarded-damages http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/11/police-vendetta-la... A defence solicitor who was awarded £550,000 in damages from a police force after he was wrongly arrested says officers mounted a vendetta against him after one of his clients was acquitted. James Watson said Cleveland police officers spent three years pursuing him, costing millions of pounds, without finding any evidence against him, before admitting a series of mistakes.
    - csmuk 13y ago
      Yeah that's about right. It's about the arrests, not the crimes.
atlantic 13y ago
I had a friend in Belgium who was raped in the street one evening by three young men. The police did not take much interest. There was no medical examination done. They said they would call her back to look at some pictures but they never did. I've fought off muggers several times over the years. I've never bothered to call the police, especially as the actions taken in self-defence might themselves constitute a crime. Despite all the hype in the cinema, my general impression is that policemen are basically bureaucrats carrying guns, not too different from teachers or bus drivers.
- agumonkey 13y ago
  I know it's quite a jump, but it reminds me of the video of the baby being run on by a car while nobody cared. Some people said being involved could be misinterpreted by the police causing you to be jailed or worse.
- berntb 13y ago
  I've lived in Sweden and Finland. That sounded more like Sweden. In Finland the police is trusted and appreciated. Among the most trusted civic functions in interviews, afaik.
forktheif 13y ago
Crime rates are lower than they've been in a long time. And the reason we know they are, is the crime survey. The crime survey telephones a bunch of random people and asks them if they've been a victim of crime in the past 12 months. The number of people reporting they're a victim of crime has been dropping since the late 90s.
madaxe 13y ago
The police are there to: - Do you for speeding. - Protect the establishment. - Threaten violence. - Prop up the prison-industrial complex for the benefit of private corporations. They are categorically not there to help you. They never have been. This is a misapprehension that has been around since the days of Peel. A police force is the state's visible threat of violence against its populace, in order to exact control and to keep the powerful powerful.
- csmuk 13y ago
  Agree entirely. I've learned this over the last few years.
- marvin 13y ago
  This is not how a democratic nation is supposed to work. So please don't hold up this characterization of the police as something which is inevitable. The democratic ideal is that the police have a national monopoly on the legal use of violence, and the use of this violence is dictated by the laws and the courts. This is how well-working democratic nations work, and it is indeed how the police force in my home country works. That anything else can be said about the USA today (maybe also the UK?), is just a testament to the scale of the democratic problems you guys have. You are really deep into it, and it doesn't seem like you realize the extent of the problem.
  - csmuk 13y ago
    It is inevitable. Every society has descended into this so far, until there is a revolution. Us people in the UK realise what is happening. At some point, the moment will occur when the state oversteps the mark on something and the shit will get flipped country-wide.
    - madaxe 13y ago
      Yup, just said the same as you. Hobbes and Hayek both anticipated this. Revolution is the only way out.

barry-cotter 13y ago

Is there an equivalent of the Danish People's Party or the beginnings of something similar? Someone to move the Overton window to the right?

Svip 13y ago
Sverigedemokraterna?
- mnsc 13y ago
  That question mark is not needed. Sverigedemokraterna is very much in the same vein as the Danish People's Party and currently rates at about 10% in opinion surveys. They haven't changed the Overton Window very much since all other parties have a pretty solid front of not supporting Sverigedemokraterna but they most certainly have shifted the window a bit to the right.
  - mjn 13y ago
    I think they're a bit different from Dansk Folkeparti (DF), mostly in having considerably more questionable roots, which I would guess doesn't help their acceptance in the party mainstream. They have made an effort to clean up their image in the past few years, expelling a number of the extreme-right elements, but the party's roots in the far-right scene makes them a bit anathema to respectable society. The origins of the party, and much of their '80s and early-'90s crowd, came out of the "subcultural right", movements like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevara_Sverige_Svenskt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevara_Sverige_Svenskt, norse-pride and white-power metal bands, the motorcycle club scene, etc. When Mikael Jansson defected from the Center Party and took over Sweden Democrats in 1995 he began a purge of the openly extreme-right elements of the party in order to turn it into a respectable anti-immigration movement, but it didn't really solidify until the past few years. Even in recent years they have had a struggle to keep those types out of the party, for example their youth leader from 2007-2010 (Erik Almqvist) was embarrassingly videotaped singing white-power music at a retreat, and was finally forced out of the party earlier this year (weirdly, for someone who opposes immigration, he reportedly emigrated to Hungary after resigning). DF by contrast has different origins, culturally rooted in something more like old-person Danish culture, rather than youth radical-right culture. They have a vaguely mythologized idea of 19th-century or early-20th-century Danish culture, as they imagine one's grandfather in a small town in Jutland might have lived. They generally therefore view the radical right-wing scene as negative, as equally a deviation from traditional quiet Danish values as immigrant crime is. This has let them keep those elements out of the party more credibly, because it's not only for image that they do it, but because their base actually culturally dislikes the far-right (especially anyone associated with the metal or biker scenes, who they see as culturally un-Danish). Not that I myself would vote for DF (as an immigrant in Denmark they aren't out to make life easier for me), but I somewhat understand their appeal better; they are more of a rural "traditionalist values" party than a radical nationalist party. I find it harder to understand how SD would get similar support, unless people either don't realize their association with the far-right subculture, really believe that their transformation is completed, or are just lodging protest votes.

belorn 13y ago

Thats what happen when politics start to dictate priorities for the police. A large group of the police force and prosecutor have been dedicated to hunt down file sharing. An other group is dedicated to maintain the national firewall. Others deal with hunting down all those 16 years old kids who "hacks" websites with DDOS. This failure of the police and the justice system has very little to do with the police, and all to do with the current politics. Going for 5% to 10% solved cases in violent crimes and robberies would simply not be as political attractive as getting that 16 year old sentenced.

ptr 13y ago
It's also what happens when bureaucracy takes over, putting the officers in the office most of the day.
madaxe 13y ago
Politicians have always run the police - a police force is the government's visible threat of violence and method of control over the population. They're not there to protect you. They're there to protect the establishment.
- aet 13y ago
  Next time you call the police. Please recite that little speech to the responding officer.
  - madaxe 13y ago
    "Responding officer"? You mean, the phone drone whose job it is to go "sir, burglary is a civil matter, you will need to pursue it yourself"? Already have.
    - patmcc 13y ago
      If you live somewhere where the police literally tell you "burglary is a civil matter", you need to either start a revolution or move to a civilized country.

vidarh 13y ago

I find it amusing that you warn of the political spin, yet cite as facts and link to an article that cites a "study" done for a TV show with no specifics about methods used or classification criteria given. Why should we assign any more trust to just those numbers?

draugadrotten 13y ago
I presented an english-language article talking about the topic. What I care about here is that the law enforcement should get better IRL. I don't care at all if you "trust" anything here, faceless HN user vidarh.I simply presented a fact for you to use or ignore. There's quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden, however they are in Swedish. Public service radio, just to pick one: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=5691590 http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artik... I'm sure you know how to use google to find more of the same. Have fun and please share the truth if you find it out there.
- vidarh 13y ago
  I'm Norwegian, so the Swedish article is not a problem. The Swedish article you linked presents a far more nuanced picture and gives even more reasons to question the other link you gave. It does not say anything about the number of crimes committed, so we can't really used this one to look at that. But it does on the other give a number of possible explanations for why the percentage of "solved" crimes dropped, though notably the article only refers to a drop versus the same period the previous year - it says nothing about longer term trends. However what it says is interesting: * The number of particularly complicated crimes, such as IT related crimes, have risen, though it gives no numbers. This claim is so fuzzy that it doesn't really tell us much, unfortunately. * The police have reduced their focus on traffic related crimes, which includes a lot of easy to solve crimes. E.g. frequent traffic-stops will "net" a lot of crimes that are instantly solved at the same time as you identify the crime. By catching people drunk driving, or driving too fast, for example. Whether or not this change is good or bad really depends on whether it coincides with more accidents etc. If it doesn't, then one might argue the police and legislative have been overzealous about this in the past. * In terms of drug related crimes, enforcement has shifted from users to dealers. "Solving" drug crimes is much easier when it involves going around and hassling vulnerable, highly visible addicts - where again the crime will be registered mainly if it is solved at the same time, by catching someone with drugs, - vs. tracking down dealers. Some of us would say this shift is distinctly positive even though it makes the numbers look worse. * At the same time the article points out that numbers for some crimes that have a much more direct effect on the general public, such robberies of homes and, as a follow on, resale of stolen property, have improved. So many of the crimes they have de-emphasised which previously scored them many easily solved crimes, are victim-less crimes or have no direct victims, and it is not clear that the reduction in solved crimes there is a problem at all. The shift in enforcement especially when it comes to drugs is in line with international shifts in attitudes. The freed up resources have seemingly been funnelled into crimes that have more serious effects on the general public, but which require more resources - such as the effort to identify key individuals tied to break-ins etc. and following them up intensively. This has been done specifically in response to policy decisions by the government, that have asked for a focus on these types of more complex crimes, and so gives even less reason to justify any claim about "abysmal Police work". No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes, nor any idea of massively rising crime. It doesn't disprove it either - it is largely orthogonal to the original claims. I wish I had time to dig around, but I don't. I do find it interesting that you chose this article to illustrate, though, if there's "quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden", as it doesn't really address the issues.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

Talking of political spin, you can usually tell when someone is trying to twist facts to make them seem more interesting. They combine things that don't really go together and put the worst one first e.g. "violent crimes and robberies". You might think, no they're talking about "violent crimes" and "violent robberies" yet the police chief is quoted as saying: " When it comes to theft, there are no witnesses, and victims often don’t know when the crime occurred." So unless these victims are so viciously beaten by muggers that they get amnesia it seems more likely to be non-violent thefts. If the violent crimes are really that bad then why not present their stats alone?

maxerickson 13y ago
In the US, theft and robbery are classified separately. One of the distinguishing characteristics is that robbery generally involves force or the threat of force to take something.
- jeltz 13y ago
  Same for in Sweden.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    Wikipedia says robbery, assault and sexual assault ("contact crimes") together made up 12% of reported crimes in 2003 Sweden. Theft related were 53%. The article claims that in 2007 Sweden "violent crimes and robberies make up about 75 percent of all crimes reported in Sweden." I'd say they've conflated theft and robbery in that article, possibly a translation issue, possibly fear mongering. (edit: and this is backed up by the link to the official stats given elsewhere in the thread by Xylakant which has robbery as less than 1% of reported crimes in 2012)
    - vidarh 13y ago
      That's particularly likely given the quote where the national police chief is quoted as talking about thefts.

mtgx 13y ago

Or maybe there are more laws criminalizing people that the police themselves thinks are ridiculous and they aren't executing them?

angularly 13y ago

Yeah I must admit the op article seems to be pure political spin. You can read in the official statistics that number of crimes have absolutely exploded in Sweden since 1975: http://www.d-intl.com/2013/11/08/dramatisk-okning-av-valdsbrotten-i-mangkulturella-sverige/ http://www.d-intl.com/2013/11/08/dramatisk-okning-av-valdsbr... It seems to me they should in fact rapidly increase the numbe of prisons, if they want to protect people.

darkbot 13y ago
d-intl.com is run by a bunch of paranoid and outright crazy neo-fascist. It's extremely racist and have close ties to the Norwegian terrorist Ander Bering Breivik as well as to the violent English Defence League(EDL). It's not by any means a decent source for anything.
- angularly 13y ago
  Well thats just like your opinion, and not true at all. The problem in Sweden is the same as in Denmark only worse. The media is controlled by leftists to a degree that almost no rightwing views are ever presented. In Denmark 80% of journalists vote to the left, and we only have one or two papers who present the 55% of the population who vote on the right wing. The same is true in Sweden only worse.
  - darkbot 13y ago
    d-intl.com/Tryckfrihetssällskapet have on numerous occasions invited EDL (now former) leader Stephen "Tommy Robinson" Yaxley-Lennon to speech at rallies and meetings. That's a fact. Your other statements are the typical Swedish right-wing conspiracy theory and slur that has no correlation with reality.
    - angularly 13y ago
      I dont know about Sweden, but in Denmark, it has been documentet many times, that about 80% of the journalists are left wing. Any way I got a bit off track here. The subject at hand is that number of prisons are being reduced, while the number of crimes are exploding through the roof according to the official statistics. And that just seems a bit odd to say the least.

Xylakant 13y ago

Beware of the political spin! The article cited is from 2008 and so nearly five years outdated. The rise has stalled and the trend has been reversing with a slight decline of 1% in 2012 [1]. The biggest problem I see is that the the article glosses over the reasons for such a change. There are multiple reasons why crime statistics change, some merely methodological, but chief among them are two factors: * Changes in criminal law, classifying new kinds of behavior as a crime or decriminalizing some behavior. (Hello Marihuana legalization!) * Willingness to report a crime. What used to be a run in among adolescents is nowadays often reported as a violent crime. Any kind of rape or sexual molestation used to be such a stigma on the victim that they were (and still often are) not reported. Same goes for the rate of solved crimes: A figure of "6%" just glosses over the details. It seems low, but what's more interesting is which crimes get solved. Bike theft has a notoriously low rate of solving the crime (1%) [2] and is very common in some regions, skewing statistics. Same for petty theft. Drug abuse is often reported as a crime. There's no chance to ever solving such crimes on a significant level. Also, how does "6%" compare to the years before? Better? Same? Less? So be weary when reading and citing those articles. Usually, if only one figure gets cited, you're being mislead. [1] http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/crime-statistics/reported-offences.html http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti... [2] http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/bicycle-theft.html http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti...

draugadrotten 13y ago
I love your source. >The rise has stalled and the trend has been reversing with a slight decline of 1% in 2012 [1]. From your source: "Since 2003, the number of reported offences has increased by approximately 147,000 (+12%). Since 1975, the trend in the total number of reported offences has been characterised by a continuous increase." That a 1% decrease in the statistics of a single year represent any significant change in the trend since 1975 remains to be seen. I'm very skeptical but I will be very happy if it turns out to be true.
- hobbe80 13y ago
  Between 2003 and 2013, the Swedish population grew by 7.8%, which should be taken into account when looking at absolute numbers of reported crimes.

jeltz 13y ago

> Research carried out by TV4’s Kalla Fakta (‘Cold Facts’) investigative news programme also revealed that violent crimes and robberies make up about 75 percent of all crimes reported in Sweden. Those numbers are bullshit. If we look at Brå's statistics (http://www.bra.se/download/18.22a7170813a0d141d21800063138/1364906629361/Total_number_of_reported_offences_2012.xls.xls http://www.bra.se/download/18.22a7170813a0d141d21800063138/1...) we see that: Total crimes 2012: 1156390 Other+petty theft: 317869 27.5% Vandalism: 152345 13.2% Fraud: 129063 11.2% -- Robbery: 9213 0.8%

runarb 13y ago

Solved in such statistics may not mean what many thinks it means. Crimes where the perpetrator is known, but there is not enough evidence to take him to court are also often counted as solved. At least here in Norway (neighbor country to Sweden), of the solved cases, about half was reported by the police itself. That normally mean that the police caught one in the act, or was them self the victim of the crime (the defendant resisted arrest, attacked or threatened a police officer etc.). So if you are a victim of a crime, and no police officer witnesses it, it isn't very likely that the perpetrator get punished.