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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

#81

Post by eitally »

gjm11 wrote: post #17
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.

Yeah! For instance, the homicide rate in Sweden is about 1 per 100k, whereas the rate in the USA is only 4.7 per 100k. (1.2 in the UK, 3.5 in Europe as a whole, 6.9 worldwide, 1.5 for Northern Europe, the subregion to which Sweden belongs.) (Why look at homicide specifically? Because almost all cases get reported and the definition of homicide is fairly uncontroversial. With some other crimes -- rape is a particularl…

The problem is that looking at national numbers is not representative of most people's experience. For example, my "town" of 140,000 (Cary, NC) has only had one murder in the past five years and is currently listed as the safest city in the US with population between 100,000-500,000 (http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/10/29/3323828/cary-claims-l...). I personally mostly ignore the police but keep them in mind as a civic resource to leverage for answers about things I don't know how to find out any other way. In a small, safe city, calling the non-emergency line can be a useful source of information. Heck, the electric service powering my neighborhood is run by the neighboring town of Apex, and their off-hours emergency line redirects to the Apex police department, who presumably handle coordinating outage reports with the emergency techs and line workers. I'm not trying to claim things are Andy-Griffith-in-Mayberry, but it's certainly closer to that than the other extreme.

Besides actual skewing, you have localized situations where the relationship of the police to the citizens (and media) is personal, friendly, helpful, and generally constructive. For every "stop and frisk" type story there's a cop helping a stranded single mother change a tire, etc.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#82

Post by camus2 »

berrypicker wrote: post #50
touzen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regulati…

whatever... start by repaying the slaves 500 years of forced work without pay, then we can start talking about entitlement.

Oh sorry ! you're right,they were housed and feed lol...

berrypicker my a ...

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#83

Post by hobbe80 »

ibsathish wrote: post #64

This is a pure political gimmick to project their country as one of the safest/crime-free countries. As many have said here, Police is run by the Government and they have the right to manipulate the data. As a general statistic, if you google it, you'll know the crime rate has been increasing in the last few years. They either fell into dumb ears or they make up by letting the criminals out. What's the point?

You seem to have a very loose understanding of how the Swedish society works. The Police is not "run by the Government" - it's role in the Swedish society is directed by Polislagen (The Police Law). The Government directs (as it does with all governmental departments) Rikspolisstyrelsen (The National Police Board) via broad (and public) assignments and budgets.

The Government (or the Police) have of course no right to manipulate the data - in Sweden more or less all data is publicly available, and manipulation of crime statistics would be something very noteworthy (and likely to cause a big scandal).

And finally, if you google it, you'll know that crime rates have been decreasing in the last few years (few years meaning 2-3, and looking at all categories of crimes). Over a 10 year period, some categories of crimes have risen (at least the number of reported crimes have risen), and others, like homicide have markedly declined.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#84

Post by jeltz »

darkbot wrote: post #57
Svip wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Sverigedemokraterna's support arise from the fact that the issue of immigration is generally seen as taboo in public Swedish debate, so the political parties at best avoid it. It also makes sense for this reason, that Sweden has a far more hardcore and aggressive extreme right scene than Denmark has (even if not more hardcore or aggressive, it is a lot larger). Because in Denmark, immigration can be part of p…

That's not true. There is a vivid debate around immigration and asylum issues in both old fashioned- and social media. Sverigedemokraterna is big because a large slew of the Swedish population is slanting toward racism and are prone to accept simple "solutions".

You oversimplify things. While you are to some extent correct I do not think that was the main reason for their surge in the last election. One contributing factor was the bullying from media and the other parties before the election where they were not allowed to participate in debates, all parties declared they would never cooperate with SD, and several newspapers ran anti-SD articles the day of the election. This strategy backfired heavily since everybody loves an underdog, and the faulty idea that if everyone wants someone silenced they must have something important to say.

There are also other factors like that some people genuinely seem to believe that SD has cleaned up their act.

EDIT: I am personally strongly pro-immigration (much more so than any party in Sweden) and I have to disagree about there being much debate about immigration in traditional media. There is a lot in social media though, so I have no idea where all the racists get their idea that they cannot debate immigration issues anywhere.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#85

Post by pimeys »

gnerd wrote: post #25
draugadrotten wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the supreme court have also taken on itself to change the sentencing. The lack of inmates could be because of a change in 2010. [Edit: the effects of which, are seen now] Most inmates serving 10+ years in Swedish prisons are drug related cases. In 2010, the Swedish supreme court decided to dramatically change the policy regarding punishment for drug trafficking. What was previously a 14-year prison senten…

Also important to note is in Sweden there is no drug scheduling system like there would be in the Anglo countries. If one were to sell or move a lot of cannabis, it would be the same as selling or moving a lot or heroin or crystal meth. For small amounts of anything, there are no custodial sentences but the fine will be about half of your monthly salary (or approximately £50 if you have no job). I have heard anecdota…

Also happens in Finland. If the police catches you smoking a joint in a park, they will raid your house in most cases. There must be something for them to find, to protect you and to protect the society...

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#86

Post by ZeroGravitas »

jeltz wrote: post #77
maxerickson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, theft and robbery are classified separately. One of the distinguishing characteristics is that robbery generally involves force or the threat of force to take something.

Same for in Sweden.

Wikipedia says robbery, assault and sexual assault ("contact crimes") together made up 12% of reported crimes in 2003 Sweden. Theft related were 53%.

The article claims that in 2007 Sweden "violent crimes and robberies make up about 75 percent of all crimes reported in Sweden."

I'd say they've conflated theft and robbery in that article, possibly a translation issue, possibly fear mongering.

(edit: and this is backed up by the link to the official stats given elsewhere in the thread by Xylakant which has robbery as less than 1% of reported crimes in 2012)

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#87

Post by INTPenis »

marvin wrote: post #70
INTPenis wrote: post #2

Minor drug offenders are more often fined than jailed. A friend got caught in his apartment with a grow op, drying cannabis, illegal mushrooms, other drugs and he ended up serving no time at all. His time will be financial, he will have to pay off his debt to society literally instead of being incarcerated.

What sort of debt is that? It's well and good if it is something which has been approved by the lawmakers, courts and population, but I am skeptical of making offenders pay very large fines. In effect, it turns into a (potentially lifelong) punishment. See e.g. the piratebay founders, none of which will ever be able to own property or any assets at all, seeing as even the interest payments on the damages they owe are…

I don't know, and I'm not saying it's a good thing. All I can say for sure is that I don't want to see people jailed for all drug offences.

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#89

Post by rimantas »

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.

How many shrinks does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the lamp bulmb must want to be changed.

How do you integrate someone unwilling to do so?

Re: Sweden closes four prisons as number of inmates plummets

#90

Post by berrypicker »

camus2 wrote: post #82
berrypicker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regulati…

whatever... start by repaying the slaves 500 years of forced work without pay, then we can start talking about entitlement. Oh sorry ! you're right,they were housed and feed lol... berrypicker my a ...

The reparations for slavery argument is a bit of a cop out.
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