I often make the argument that it is useless to talk about anti-Semitism unless you are willing to name the perpetrators. That is not meant to label an entire ethnic or religious group of people as being Jew-haters; it is to educate people as to where the threat is mainly coming from. While anti-Semitism can be found in every group, not all groups represent the same level of threat, at least not at this point in history.
Similarly, it is useless to try and analyze criminal trends unless you are willing to name the perpetrators. Again, that is not meant to label entire groups of people as being criminals, but to adequately inform the public and address the threat.
That brings us to Sweden, which is experiencing historical levels in violent crime, including gun crimes. The government recently tasked the Crime Prevention Council to analyze gun violence in Sweden during the past two decades. The report is in, but curiously, no mention is made of the fact that the problem is mostly due to criminal immigrants. The topic of immigration and national background is not even mentioned.
The conservative news outlet, Samnytt, is asking why. They posed their questions to one of the authors of the study. The below Samnytt article is translated by Fousesquawk.
Crime Prevention Council (BRÅ): Why we avoid immigration in the report on shootings
Posted 14:20 (September 2, 2024
The Crime Prevention Council is being criticized for completely leaving out immigration and the origin of perpetrators in a new report on the evolution of gun violence in Sweden.
"There are certainly many things that influence how we didn't have the possibility of putting things into this report," says one of the authors of the report to Samnytt.
It is the government that has given the Crime Prevention Council the assignment of investigating how gun violence in the criminal environment has evolved, "since the middle of the (2000-2010) decade". Among others, "to analyze which factors that could have had importance for the shooting (numbers) within the criminal environment".
And during the past week, a 120-page report was presented entitled: "The increase in gun violence in Sweden". The number of shootings has sharply increased while the age of those possessing weapons has decreased, are two conclusions from the report which was reviewed by criminologist Manne Gerell.
"When we started the study, we believed that especially media noteworthy events would have had more importance for how gun violence has evolved up until the 2020s. But we have seen that it is who is shot that seems to have greater importance as to whether the shootings escalate, than how the shooting happened, "says Henrik Angerbrandt, one of the authors of the report, in a statement.
Nothing about immigration
However, the reports says nothing about immigration or the perpetrator's ethnic or cultural origin. Something that, among other things, the former editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, Per Gudmundsson, points out on social media (platform) X.
"The BRÅ report is clinically freed from everything having anything to do with the immigration problem," he states and later adds:
"I can't escape the feeling that BRÅ made a conscious choice. Unfortunately, that has consequences for which measures that are suggested, i.e., the usability for the client (the government!)"
However, Henrik Angerbrandt thinks that the perpetrator's background is not considered of interest for the report.
"That's not the type of report we did. We have not looked at the individual level. We have not looked at foreign background, and generally, we have not looked at the socio-economic factor,"Angerbrandt tells Samnytt.
Impossible to have everything
Henrik Angerbrandt then points out that there was no possibility to include everything in the report on shootings, and that immigration was a factor that was skipped over this time.
"We are looking at an aspect of how gun violence has evolved. We are looking at how the criminal environment has changed in the weapons used. We are looking back 20 years in time, and it is impossible to give an overall picture of everything that happens over 20 years. There are certainly many things that influence what we don't have the possibility to include in this report. This is a contribution to the knowledge base," he says.
(Samnytt): -It's not just that many of those who commit shootings have foreign background, but also that many of the shootings are directed from abroad. You have a chapter entitled "Possible measures to reduce gun violence". Isn't it interesting that there are people in Turkey and Iraq who are ordering shootings in Sweden?
"I am a little unsure what you mean, but we are writing about a geographical proliferation and that people are abroad or have contacts throughout Sweden."
"The measures that we point out are general, so that it can be seen how the criminal environment is changing. We don't give any specific suggestions for measures, rather we follow up on whether what is being done is actually working. We point out that we have to be a little forward-looking in (our) work, and we have updated knowledge as to how the environment changes, as well as the availability of weapons, importation, and these types of questions. Within that also includes (the fact) that conflict-driven actors certainly can be abroad. We have to address them too, but exactly how that is to be done in cooperation with other countries we don't go into.
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