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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

#41

Post by csmuk »

cones688 wrote: post #19
csmuk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left the…

Did you raise this with the IPCC[0]? [0] http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/

No - that's purely a form of idealism.

At best you'll get an apology from the police which isn't worth the effort.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#42

Post by csmuk »

madaxe wrote: post #36
csmuk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left the…

The police are there to: - Do you for speeding. - Protect the establishment. - Threaten violence. - Prop up the prison-industrial complex for the benefit of private corporations. They are categorically not there to help you. They never have been. This is a misapprehension that has been around since the days of Peel. A police force is the state's visible threat of violence against its populace, in order to exact contr…

Agree entirely. I've learned this over the last few years.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#43

Post by Xylakant »

draugadrotten wrote: post #3

Beware of the political spin! Note that while the number of inmates plummets, the number of crimes committed is higher than ever. This is a failure of the police and the justice system and not a success story. Nearly 95 percent of violent crimes and robberies committed in Sweden go unsolved , and an individual police officer solves an average of three crimes per year. http://www.thelocal.se/20081103/15412

Beware of the political spin!

The article cited is from 2008 and so nearly five years outdated. The rise has stalled and the trend has been reversing with a slight decline of 1% in 2012 [1]. The biggest problem I see is that the the article glosses over the reasons for such a change. There are multiple reasons why crime statistics change, some merely methodological, but chief among them are two factors:

* Changes in criminal law, classifying new kinds of behavior as a crime or decriminalizing some behavior. (Hello Marihuana legalization!)

* Willingness to report a crime. What used to be a run in among adolescents is nowadays often reported as a violent crime. Any kind of rape or sexual molestation used to be such a stigma on the victim that they were (and still often are) not reported.

Same goes for the rate of solved crimes: A figure of "6%" just glosses over the details. It seems low, but what's more interesting is which crimes get solved. Bike theft has a notoriously low rate of solving the crime (1%) [2] and is very common in some regions, skewing statistics. Same for petty theft. Drug abuse is often reported as a crime. There's no chance to ever solving such crimes on a significant level. Also, how does "6%" compare to the years before? Better? Same? Less?

So be weary when reading and citing those articles. Usually, if only one figure gets cited, you're being mislead.

[1] http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti... [2] http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti...

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#44

Post by icebraining »

tluyben2 wrote: post #11
csmuk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Nottingham in the UK's bullshit crime statistics. "Arrests fallen! Crime rates lower than ever!" Actually people just do it vigilante style or don't bother reporting it because the police are fucking useless. I mean I caught a person breaking into my car, had photos of the person doing it, the car was covered in finger prints, they arrived in another stolen car with plates that were photographed, left the…

That sounds kind of like the EU countries I've lived in / been to; unless the police is standing next to the crime happening nothing much happens. And that is not just (just, because it is of course) populist talk; it happens a lot. People point out the crime, have images, videos on their phones and the police makes a nice report; you'll never hear about it again. I had it in Spain. I understand the vigilante crap ev…

Here in Portugal, my brother left his cellphone unattended and someone took it. We filled a claim with the cops (mostly for insurance purposes) and they got it back after a month or so, without so much as a description of the person who took it (I believe they got an address from the carrier).

Of course, this is just anecdotal.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#45

Post by berrypicker »

andyroid wrote: post #30
berrypicker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will find this offensive, but it's mostly because of immigration. Sweden has a one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe, with more and more immigrants coming in every year, and crime is increasing relatively fast. It's not just correlation: serious crime (violence, theft) is overrepresented in immigrant groups, especially African and Asian immigrants, who are also less likely to serve pr…

Providing statistics does not make you a racist. Providing false claims such as "crime is increasing relatively fast" (reported crimes decreased by 1% in 2012 compared to the year before) while trying to attribute this to immigrant groups does. As for statistics, people with little to no income are also "overrepresented" in crime. Who would have guessed.

Like somebody else said in the thread, look at crimes like homicide and theft, whose definition are uncontroversial. Crime is rising.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#46

Post by hobbe80 »

seivan wrote: post #8

Another bullshit article. Crime in Sweden is insane, I don't feel safe anymore. We barely jail anyone for crimes, it's always fines and community bullshit service when it should be prison.

This is truly bullshit. Violent crimes in Sweden is at an all-time low. The primary reason for some statistics to indicate raising crime-rates is that the tendency to report a crime has risen a lot lately (a very good thing). The fact that you're feeling this way is purely due to a shift in how Swedish media reports on crime (30 years ago an assault in a smaller Swedish city would not make the national news, now it's very much highlighted), which in this Internet era of connectivity makes you feel a lot more is happening in your near vicinity.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#48

Post by bolder88 »

Ygg2 wrote: post #24
berrypicker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will find this offensive, but it's mostly because of immigration. Sweden has a one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe, with more and more immigrants coming in every year, and crime is increasing relatively fast. It's not just correlation: serious crime (violence, theft) is overrepresented in immigrant groups, especially African and Asian immigrants, who are also less likely to serve pr…

Hmm, crime is present in highly dense, poor areas, color me surprised. /sarc Crime is increasing because the society can't integrate them fast enough. It's literally same deal before abortions were an option. More people, less resource on a local level, leads to crime growing. This has nothing to do with the minorities, but how they are being handled.

Pretty sure most immigrants do not want to be "integrated".

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#49

Post by anon1385 »

csmuk wrote: post #41
cones688 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you raise this with the IPCC[0]? [0] http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/

No - that's purely a form of idealism. At best you'll get an apology from the police which isn't worth the effort.

Additionally, don't make a complaint about the police unless you fully understand what you are getting yourself into. There is a reasonable chance that they will harass you and your family until they can find some reason to arrest you (or they may just arrest you for no reason).

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/11/police-vendetta-la...

A defence solicitor who was awarded £550,000 in damages from a police force after he was wrongly arrested says officers mounted a vendetta against him after one of his clients was acquitted.

James Watson said Cleveland police officers spent three years pursuing him, costing millions of pounds, without finding any evidence against him, before admitting a series of mistakes.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#50

Post by berrypicker »

touzen wrote: post #22
berrypicker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people will find this offensive, but it's mostly because of immigration. Sweden has a one of the most liberal immigration policies in Europe, with more and more immigrants coming in every year, and crime is increasing relatively fast. It's not just correlation: serious crime (violence, theft) is overrepresented in immigrant groups, especially African and Asian immigrants, who are also less likely to serve pr…

You are being racist. What you're saying is that immigrants are somehow more inclined to commit crimes simply because they're immigrants. That _is_ a racist statement and you're also ignoring the real reason. The reason crime is increasing is that Sweden has become a more unequal and segregated society. Immigrants have been hit harder by this development because of, for example, discrimination on the job market. So b…

Enforcing equality has historically shown to have the opposite effect. Thomas Sowell, an African American (discrimination is more prevalent in the states) has written extensively about this, as have many others regarding quotas and other forms of forced 'equality'. So no, I won't demand equality, also because I believe in the fact that employers should have the freedom to hire whoever they want without state regulation.

I really don't like this mentality of entitlement, and the excusing of any negative aspects of poorer groups on the richer. Interestingly this behaviour is more passionate in the middle classes than from people who are actually living in poverty. Ted Kaczynski talks about this.

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