Thirty people were killed in shootings in the Scandinavian country between January and May this year, an alarming development that shows how small conflicts between subcultures escalate into acts of violence.
While many European countries have seen a decline in gun homicides, Sweden’s number of deadly shootings has increased each year since 2005, a problem laid out by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention last year.
However, this year is even worse, with 30 people having been fatally shot just in the first five months, causing Swedish police and government authorities to fear that the current annual record of 47 shooting victims will be broken.
The rise in shootings is the focus of debate in Sweden and its neighboring countries, Denmark and Norway, because it shows an increase in victims and a tendency for the violence to spread to residential neighborhoods outside the bigger cities – for example, to medium-sized towns like Kalmar or Örebro and the Järva region north of the capital Stockholm. The latter saw nine shooting deaths last year alone, and several took place near schools or kindergartens.
In general, the Scandinavian country sees more random and dispersed shootings involving young people than other European nations, according to Jerzy Sarnecki, a professor with Stockholm University´s criminology department.
Sarnecki has done substantial research on crime in Sweden and says the current numbers are very worrying.
“I wouldn’t even call it gang shootings. They happen mostly in very loosely composed criminal networks and usually over insignificant conflicts that lead to excessive violence,” he said in an interview with Courthouse News.
He pointed to various subcultures characterized by low levels of employment, compromised general living standards and a lack of possibility to continue education at a relatively young age, what he described as the main factors for the violent events that have escalated over the past decade.
“These are all very well-known catalyzers in criminology. But they are new to Sweden and Scandinavia. We have seen violent subcultures in the U.S., especially in immigrant environments. The big problem is that every act of deadly violence provokes the next. And so, it goes on,” Sarnecki said.
Klara Hradilova Selin, a research analyst at the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, pointed to the same factors upon the release of the government agency’s May 2021 report on gun homicides.
“These factors may include illegal drug markets, criminal gangs, or low levels of confidence in the police in certain areas. But these risk factors are also found in other European countries without these having experienced the same trend in gun homicide that we have seen in Sweden,” Selin is quoted as saying in the report.
Sarnecki agreed that it remains a “mystery” why these conditions – which exist in the suburbs all over Europe – result in escalating violence in Sweden.
“We see the same subcultures and lack of well-functioning integration of people with an immigrant background in other countries. So why is this happening in Sweden and not in a suburb outside of Marseille in France?” the criminologist said.
“Maybe Sweden is just the first place, we see the rise of deadly violence because of these conditions,” he added. “The bottom line is that we cannot explain it.”
Over the last two to three years, Swedish police have launched several actions against gangs. They have arrested members and seized illegal weapons as part of large joint investigations of criminal networks.
But such efforts can sometimes backfire, according to Sarnecki, because they leave an empty space behind for aspiring young gang members to conquer. These generational shifts often take place through aggressive means.
Sarnecki emphasized the importance of preventing young and vulnerable people´s involvement in illegal activities from an early age. Here, schools and social services play an integral role.
Sweden is not the only Scandinavian country focusing on lowering its violent crimes. Last week, at a joint meeting of the Nordic ministers of justice, the Danish and Swedish ministers had open talks on the need for cross-border collaboration to fight organized crime.