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Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

theguardian.com

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Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#141

Post by draugadrotten »

vidarh wrote: post #130
draugadrotten wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presented an english-language article talking about the topic. What I care about here is that the law enforcement should get better IRL. I don't care at all if you "trust" anything here, faceless HN user vidarh.I simply presented a fact for you to use or ignore. There's quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden, however they are in Swedish. Public service radio, just to pick one: http://sv…

I'm Norwegian, so the Swedish article is not a problem. The Swedish article you linked presents a far more nuanced picture and gives even more reasons to question the other link you gave. It does not say anything about the number of crimes committed , so we can't really used this one to look at that. But it does on the other give a number of possible explanations for why the percentage of "solved" crimes dropped, tho…

> No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes

I can't be reading the same article as you, but I'll leave it at that.

Since you claim to read Swedish, try this google search for Swedish police solves fewer crimes: https://www.google.se/#q=svensk+polis+l%C3%B6ser+f%C3%B6rre+...

I paraphrase the first few hits:

- Despite more money, fewer crimes a solved (SVT.SE) - The police solves fewer crimes despite new billions (DN.SE) - Police solves fewer crimes than ever (Aftonbladet) - Police increasingly worse at solving crimes (Expressen) - Finnish police solves 80% - Swedish solves 17% (Exponerat) - Swedish police solves even fewer crimes (HBL.FI)

and the list goes on.

I can't be reading the same internet as you, if you can't find quote a few recent articles about the abysmal police work in Sweden.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#142

Post by drivingmissm »

tokenadult wrote: post #122

I was glad to see that the recent article kindly submitted here gives the inmate count for Sweden, and Sweden's population. "According to official data, the Swedish prison population has dropped by nearly a sixth since it peaked at 5,722 in 2004. In 2012, there were 4,852 people in prison in Sweden, out of a population of 9.5 million." So I looked up my home state of Minnesota's inmate count and population for a roug…

Interestingly Minnesota has the largest population of Swedish descendents in the US.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#143

Post by berrypicker »

touzen wrote: post #114
berrypicker wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think employers should be able to refuse somebody based on ethnicity, whether I agree with the act itself or not is irrelevant, I believe in the freedom to do so. My personal opinions regarding employment do not affect my belief that you can't force equality. One economist supporting my view doesn't make me right, okay, but you haven't really added anything, you just labelled him right-wing and left it there,…

Your economist being right wing is relevant because most libertarians refuse to acknowledge the positive effects of equality. Noting that a source is biased is a valid point. I agree that pointing out that Kaczynski is an insane serial killer who forced a bunch of papers to publish his anarcho-primitivist manifesto by threatening to keep bombing people (WTF?) doesn't prove he's a poor mathematician. However, we're no…

> libertarians refuse to acknowledge the positive effects of equality

You just made this up, or, you don't understand the difference between trying to force equality and equality itself. Equality may have positive effects, trying to force it upon people does not, this is a well-documented phenomenon Example, colleges - entry requirements are lowered in top colleges for Black students, who, in turn, have higher drop out rates because they can't keep up.

>While not everything on Wikipedia is true, it's certainly a less biased source than the ones you refer to.

This is the equivalent of saying "your sources are biased, mine are not" to affirm your socialist ideas.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#144

Post by Xylakant »

draugadrotten wrote: post #141
vidarh wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Norwegian, so the Swedish article is not a problem. The Swedish article you linked presents a far more nuanced picture and gives even more reasons to question the other link you gave. It does not say anything about the number of crimes committed , so we can't really used this one to look at that. But it does on the other give a number of possible explanations for why the percentage of "solved" crimes dropped, tho…

> No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes I can't be reading the same article as you, but I'll leave it at that. Since you claim to read Swedish, try this google search for Swedish police solves fewer crimes: https://www.google.se/#q=svensk+polis+l%C3%B6ser+f%C3%B6rre+... I paraphrase the first few hits: - Despite more money, fewer crimes a solved (…

Since you already admitted that you liked my source I assume that you also read the introductory page which contains this enlightening paragraph at the top [1]:

Comparisons between countries that are based on their individual crime statistics require caution since such statistics are produced differently in different countries. Criminal statistics do not provide a simple reflection of the level of crime in a given country.

Criminal statistics are influenced by both legal and statistical factors, and by the extent to which crime is reported and registered. These factors can vary from one country to another. There are no international standards for how crime statistics should be produced and presented and this makes international comparisons difficult.

The comparison with Finnland doesn't hold. Also the 17% you quote directly contradicts the 6% in your earlier article, at least one of the two can't be right.

Then again, the GP doesn't contradict the assertion that the overall ratio is now lower than a year ago. You're nit refuting his point. His argument is that the police now concentrates less on easily solvable crimes that have little effect on the general population but rather on more difficult crimes with significant effect on the general population - which in my book is a good thing. Tying police success or failure to a statistic that measures something only tangentially related is a mistake, albeit a common one, even in high profile newspapers. (cue rant about journalism today).

http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti...

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#145

Post by nzp »

tokenadult wrote: post #122

I was glad to see that the recent article kindly submitted here gives the inmate count for Sweden, and Sweden's population. "According to official data, the Swedish prison population has dropped by nearly a sixth since it peaked at 5,722 in 2004. In 2012, there were 4,852 people in prison in Sweden, out of a population of 9.5 million." So I looked up my home state of Minnesota's inmate count and population for a roug…

> How does Minnesota's system work for me as a member of the public? I can walk all over my neighborhood feeling perfectly safe, and even my children can freely go out in public, walking for a radius of a mile or biking for a radius of four or five miles in any direction, without risk or fear.

I'm genuinely curious, I'm honestly not trolling, is this state of affairs remarkable in the US these days? Is this really an accomplishment? Is it worse in general?

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#146

Post by marvin »

vidarh wrote: post #135
marvin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense to me. Why hasn't my native Norway ended up in this spot? Claiming "it is inevitable" isn't a valid argument, projecting to unlikely-seeming future scenarios can be used to prove anything. Just because two big nations have ended up with a screwed-up political system doesn't prove that it is an inevitability.

Try arguing with a Norwegian police officer. Even calmly. Odds of ending up in jail overnight are pretty high, though you might find one with a sense of humour now. Norway is one of those countries where shouting insults at a police officer can be illegal where shouting those same insults at a random strangers would not be - there explicitly is one law for public officials and one for the rest. The idea of public off…

Do you have any sources to back up these claims? Some can probably be documented with a bit of historical digging, but most of this is just opinion which does not match my experience.

Not cooperating with the police will get you in trouble anywhere in the world.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#147

Post by berrypicker »

hobbe80 wrote: post #105
marvin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics on this are fairly clear, but not very well published. It would certainly be possible to dig them up, but a comprehensive review would require a bit of work. You could find this in the official statistics, but newspaper folks are reluctant to compile them and put them on the front page. In Norway, the per-capita rate of violent robberies, burglaries and violent rape is overwhelmingly larger in immigran…

And yet, when you control for other biases (like income level, employment status, adult figures in household), this difference between immigrants and non-immigrants seem to disappear... almost like the defining factor is not where you (or your parents) were born, but more like your relative position in the society. Strange, huh?

Let's assume what you say is true, why, still, should I support immigration, when almost all immigrants are from social groups where 'income level, employment status, adult figures in household' are in a range where crime is high?

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#148

Post by ToastyMallows »

drivingmissm wrote: post #142
tokenadult wrote: post #122

I was glad to see that the recent article kindly submitted here gives the inmate count for Sweden, and Sweden's population. "According to official data, the Swedish prison population has dropped by nearly a sixth since it peaked at 5,722 in 2004. In 2012, there were 4,852 people in prison in Sweden, out of a population of 9.5 million." So I looked up my home state of Minnesota's inmate count and population for a roug…

Interestingly Minnesota has the largest population of Swedish descendents in the US.

Source?

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#149

Post by draugadrotten »

marvin wrote: post #118
hobbe80 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, when you control for other biases (like income level, employment status, adult figures in household), this difference between immigrants and non-immigrants seem to disappear... almost like the defining factor is not where you (or your parents) were born, but more like your relative position in the society. Strange, huh?

Can you prove this? It's the first time I have heard someone make this claim, although it seems like something which is reasonable to test for.

I'd say it's generally believed to be the truth in Sweden, however, it's a heavily politicized question. Crime statistics are very complex and immigration is such a political hot potato that mixing the two together makes it nearly unworkable.

Proving criminals are innocent victims of poverty and class is difficult unless you are of Marxist persuasion. Statistics related to immigration and crime are obscure, as definitions of crimes change and entire classes of statistics are forbidden to do for political reasons (e.g. tracking offender's race or religion)

However, one point of view is that it's the opposing viewpoint that must be proven. It's also hard to prove that being "immigrant" or "non-european" is causing you to be a criminal, unless you are a nationalist.

Personally, I'd say it's asking the wrong question. We want to reduce crime and poverty, and the question is how to do it. If it was easy to prevent poverty, it would be done already. And frankly, if Sweden hasn't prevented poverty "enough" when non-working immigrants are provided with food, clothes, housing, cable-TV and mobile phones, then when is it really prevented?

Example sources: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/gruppsida.aspx?programid=3615&g... http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/brottslighet-bland-inva... http://www.advokatsamfundet.se/Advokaten/Tidningsnummer/2010... http://www.bgf.nu/faktabanken/kriminalitet/brabra2.html

and I'm not writing a dissertation in sociology here, unless you want to give me enough bitcoins :)

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#150

Post by dalke »

jeltz wrote: post #129
gnerd wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much the opposite. In Sweden, even alcohol is a controlled substance and you may recall pressure being put on NL for allowing foreign people to consume cannabis in coffee shops (mainly in Amsterdam), well that pressure was from Sweden who saw the practise as a way for Swedes to get around their laws by flying to Amsterdam for a weekend (although just across the border in Copenhagen, a Swede can buy cannabis at C…

> It is a throwback to notions from the 19th century, puritanical christian Sweden where the notion was that Swedes have an 'addict gene'. 19th century Sweden was not "puritanical Christian". The ideas of absolute temperance entered through influences from the Anglo-Saxon world, local temperance organizations mostly advocated alcohol use in moderation. I believe that the idea of Swedes being especially prone to addit…

I agree that "puritanical" isn't appropriate for Swedish Lutheranism, but I suspect the previous poster was using "puritanical" more loosely, as a rough antonym to "hedonistic" and not as a specific religious movement or influence.

I'm not sure though about your statement "mostly advocated alcohol use in moderation."

There was the Swedish prohibition referendum in 1922. Just under 50% of the voters wanted an absolute prohibition on "rusdrycker". That includes spirits, wine, and strong beer. The referendum was "För eller mot införande av fullständigt rusdrycksförbud" - "for or against the introduction of the complete prohibition of intoxicating drinks."

(I'm uncertain how to translate 'rusdryck.' I think 'intoxicating drinks' is best, vs. "drinks with alcohol." A rusdryck is currently defined in Sweden (since 1944) as drinks with at least 2.25% alcohol by volume. I don't know what it meant in 1922. IOGT put it at 2% back in the late 1880.

For comparison, in the US the 1919 Volstead Act set the limit as 0.5%, while the 1933 Cullen-Harrison Act raised it to 3.2% by weight (=4% by volume), just a few months before the amendment overturning Prohibition. For that short time, US prohibition laws were less strict than what Sweden would have had.)

In any case, I don't think it's the same as saying that the temperance movements advocated for "alcohol use in moderation." Most of the temperance movements seem to have been for the ban, and relatively fewer temperance organizations (like the "Landsföreningen för folknykterhet utan förbud" - "National Association of Public Temperance Without Prohibition") against it.

As for the Christian influence, from what I can tell, while there were Christian organization in the early 1800s which advocated less alcohol use, it wasn't until the the "new" temperance movements of the late 1800s, with strong US influences, that people advocated for a complete ban. Some, like NGTO, were more specifically Christian than others. I think the modern IOGT-NTO is not Christian, though there are still Christian-based temperance movements in Sweden. As I recall, most people in the more religious area of Sweden voted for the ban, but that could also be an agriculture/small-town vs. industrial/big-city divide.

The modern temperance movement is, as you say, not the same as 100 years ago. IOGT-NTO advocates for reduced use of alcohol, and for the existence of alcohol-free places (like meeting halls). It does not advocate for the ban of alcohol.

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