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This is Part II of a three-part series on crime in Sweden. Read Part I:Is Sweden the 'Rape Capital' of Europe? Recently, conspiracy and tabloid web sites have been filled with horror stories about refugees in Sweden, accusing them of everything from rape and murder to sheer bad manners. Writing for the British tabloid The Daily Mail on 3 March 2017, Katie Hopkins described the situation in breathless terms: World leaders such as British politicians Nigel Farage and U.S. president Donald Trump have claimed that Sweden is now overrun with crime because the country took in about 193,000 asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016. However, most violence in Sweden can’t be linked to asylum seekers. Instead, economic stagnation in immigrant communities that formed decades ago has resulted in intergenerational poverty, which has in turn fueled the proliferation of street gangs. Data provided by Statistics Sweden show, for example, that unemployment is higher and education levels lower in Herrgården, which is thought of as the most dangerous part of Rosengård, a neighborhood in Malmö. The city of Malmö is often the subject of news reports about the supposed Swedish crime wave. Deputy Mayor Nils Karlsson told us that crime in these areas stems from Sweden’s failure to integrate previous generations of immigrants. Since the vast majority of the ethnically-Swedish population is college-educated, employers usually choose people with academic degrees over those without degrees, even for entry-level positions — in short, the same disparities that fuel crime all over the world: Sweden's governmental agency that conducts crime research, Brå, has not performed a study that takes into account the nationality of crime suspects since 2005, as the law currently prevents them from tracking the national origin of crime suspects and victims. In 2005, they found that people with non-Swedish backgrounds were 2.5 times more likely to be crime suspects, but Brå pointed to a Stockholm University finding that economic opportunity and social mobility play a decisive role in criminal activity: (The term context-of-exit means the circumstances under which migrants left their home country). The experts we interviewed all noted that critics are conflating recently-arrived asylum seekers with other populations when they talk about migrant crime. Many of the persons committing crimes in areas such as Malmö or the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby are young people who were either born in Sweden to immigrant parents or were born outside the country but arrived in Sweden at a young age. Joakim Palmkvist, a long-time crime reporter for the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan, which is based in Malmö, explained that there is no massive new crime wave being perpetrated by newly-arrived refugees in Sweden’s suburbs — instead, crime today is an iteration of gang violence that has been going on in the country since the 1990s, starting with American exports such as the motorcycle gangs Hell's Angels and Bandidos. Sitting in a small meeting area in Sydsvenskan's newsroom, Palmkvist explained that the motorcycle gangs were the first wave of gang organization in Sweden. They set the stage for the second wave, which to a large extent consisted of the children of people who fled the Balkan war. The current spate in violence in these areas is the result of a power vacuum in the organized crime community and the younger third wave — children of immigrants who have lived in Sweden most of their lives — who are now trying to establish themselves. What sets the so-called third wave apart from earlier waves is its chaotic nature, loose structure, and disconnection from wider society. The bar of what can spark a homicide is also lower than it has ever been; a wrong look or a leer at a girlfriend could lead to a shooting, Palmkvist said: Crime researcher Johanna Olseryd pointed out that Brå’s annual crime survey showed that homicides aren’t increasing, but they are changing in nature: Police in Malmö are currently handling 14 homicides, a number that has overwhelmed local investigators, said Erik Jansåker, police chief for Malmö's southern areas. One of the most rattling of the recent deaths was that of 16-year-old immigrant Ahmed Obaid, himself an immigrant. No one knows for certain why he was targeted in Rosengård while standing by a bus stop. A bouquet of yellow flowers still rested against a light pole at the bus stop on 16 March 2017, two months after his shooting. Officer Johannes Schultz, who patrols the neighborhood on foot, told us that Obaid's shooting death sent a chill through the community: Karlsson said that while the country's crime is historically low he can understand the fear that the violence can engender, as when it does happen, it tends to be high profile: Yet, Karlsson, said, crime in Sweden has been alternately sensationalized and ignored. He told us that both liberals (who think of Sweden as a paradise) and conservatives (who say it is overrun with violence) have both gotten it wrong: Research from Brå backs him up — crime data show a general downward trend since 2005: In this graph from Sweden's crime study, the dark solid line represents citizens who said they were victims of crime. The dotted line represents people who said someone in their household had been the victim of property crime, while the light solid line represents people who said they were victims of crimes on their person, a broad legal term that can mean anything from homicide to trespassing. Brå explained that overall, crime figures are trending down:
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