Immigration and Crime in Scandinavia

*The sources for all of these figures are the original government reports (when applicable) published in that country’s language so if you cannot read Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish you can use Google Translate to translate the pdf files* 

Sweden

A report studying 4.4 million Swedes between the ages of 15 and 51 during the period 1997-2001 found that 25% of crimes were committed by foreign-born individuals while and additional 20% were committed by individuals born to foreign-born parents. In particular, immigrants from Africa and South & Western Asian were more likely to be charged of a crime than individuals born to two Swedish parents by a factor of 4.5 and 3.5 respectively. In regard to rape, the report revealed that immigrants were 5.5 times more likely to be charged of rape than individuals born in Sweden to two Swedish parent, although the category of immigrant was not broken down by country of origin in this report [1].

Findings from a previous study published by the Swedish government in 1996 determined that between 1985 and 1989 individuals born in Iraq, North Africa (Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia), and Africa (excluding Uganda and the North African countries) were convicted of rape at rates 20, 23, and 17 times greater than individuals born in Sweden respectively. In total, individuals from an immigrant background accounted for 61% of all rape convictions [2].

Norway

According to a 2011 report by Statistics Norway in 2009 first generation immigrants from Africa were three times more likely than ethnic Norwegians (or rather individuals who are neither first nor second generation immigrants) to be convicted of a felony while Somali immigrants in particular being 4.4 times more likely to be convicted of a felony than an ethnic Norwegian. Similarly, Iraqis and Pakistanis were found to have rates of conviction for felonies greater than ethnic Norwegians by a factor of 3 and 2.6 respectively.

Another finding was that second-generation African and Asian immigrants had a higher rate of convictions for felonies than first-generation immigrants. While first generation African immigrants had conviction rates for felonies of 16.7 per 1,000 individuals over the age of 15, for second generation immigrants the rate was 28 per 1,000 – an increase of over 60%. And for Asian immigrants an increase from 9.3 per 1,000 to 17.1 per 1,000 was observed.

In 2010 13% of sexual crimes charges were filed against first generation immigrants who make up 7.8% of the population – a rate of overrepresentaion of 1.7. Unfortunately no data is available on sexual crime which is broken down by ethnic background [3].

Although, according to a 2010 statement by the Oslo Police Department since 2006 every convicted perpetrator of assault rape was a non-Western immigrant and the vast majority of victims were ethnic Norwegian women [4].

Denmark

A study of crime statistics published in 2014 found that among males between the age of 20 and 24 descendants of non-Western immigrants had a crime rate 2.6 times greater than those of Danish origin. In terms of types of crime among those who are convicted of a crime, descendants of non-Western immigrants are more than twice as likely to have been convicted of a violent crime than an individual of Danish origin.

And even after for controlling for age and socioeconomic status individuals whose ethnic background is from Morocco, Somalia, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Iraq are still overrepresented as convicted criminals by factors of 1.5 to 2.5 [5].