
Swedish Crime Statistics 1970-2015 - rodionos
https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374#fullscreen
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alasdair_
A naive person may be fooled into thinking that, say, the actual number of
rapes per capita increased substantially, especially recently. This is likely
untrue. For example:

"In Sweden, the definition of rape has been successively widened over the
years, leading to an ever larger number of sexual assaults being classified as
rape.[3][13][14][32] For example, in 1992 a legislative change came into force
which shifted the dividing line between sexual assault and rape. This
legislative change resulted in about a 25% increase in the level of registered
rape offences.[12]"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden)

~~~
polack
That explains a spike 1992-1993 and 2004-2005, but how do you explain that it
has almost doubled since 2005? It's not really plausible that there has been a
legislative change basically every year since then.

~~~
monodeldiablo
Classification and reporting of crime is really, really messy. There could be
a host of factors to explain the doubling, even if _actual crime was on the
decrease_. Population statistics are tricky like that, because they can't
accurately account for all the classes they wish to measure.

For example, most countries have atrociously poor reporting rates for sexual
crimes -- I've heard estimates that 90%+ go unreported, even in liberal
Western democracies. So, with the widening of the Swedish law and a
corresponding increase in outreach by the authorities, the rise you see might
simply be an increase in reporting. Maybe more victims are coming forward and
filing a police report. Perhaps more women feel confident that their case will
be treated equitably.

Of course, such societal shifts in attitude take time. You wouldn't expect a
stair-step plot because it's unreasonable to assume that the whole population
would suddenly start trusting the legal system X% more. Trust is earned. And
so, as outreach continues and victims notice other victims coming forward and
being helped, they gain courage.

So that's one of many hypothetical explanations in which actual sexual
assaults are committed less frequently, but the statistics report a rise.
There is the real possibility that this could all be attributable to a sort of
survivorship bias.

At any rate, I'm worried at the kneejerk "blame the immigrants" reaction by
some commenters. Let's not start pointing fingers without data. There's enough
xenophobic rage swirling around already.

~~~
imartin2k
I live in Sweden (moved there from Germany in 2006). The presence of the topic
of rape in the media and public debate instantly surprised me. It has always
been a topic of great concern to the Swedes, which I noted as being very
different to Germany. In very simple terms, Swedes, due to the advanced state
of gender equality (in comparison to most other countries, including Germany),
are highly sensitive to occurences which might be associated with the act of
rape. That, over time, inevitably leads to increased reports of acts of
(possible) rape which would not be reported in countries in which awareness is
weak, the law forgiving and in which shame and honor count so much.

Understanding Swedish rape statisics requires understanding a cultural aspect
and the context that this statistic is embedded in.

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rhapsodic
Here's something relevant:

[https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5195/sweden-
rape](https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5195/sweden-rape)

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bsdlite
These are counts--is it disingenuous to call them "statistics"? On a related
note, is there a way in the UI to scale this data by population?

~~~
rodionos
Good point regarding population-prorated numbers, however BRA calls the totals
'statistics' nevertheless: [https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-
and-statist...](https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-
statistics/crime-statistics.html)

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stenl
Would some kind soul please divide by the growing size of the population?
Meanwhile, this link has population-adjusted charts back to 2006:
[https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-
statist...](https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-
statistics.html)

~~~
rodionos
Same stats prorated, cases per 100K population:

[https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/2/](https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/2/)

Rape and sex offenses in general should be prorated by an age-filtered subset
of the total male population.

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bsaul
What happened in 2004 ??

