Three people were killed overnight in separate incidents in Sweden as deadly violence linked to a feud between criminal gangs escalated.
It still sucks, but not as bad as the title which made me fear a mass shooting/terror attack
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Sorry but terrorism is usually a one time thing, this is gang shit this is worse as it will happen more and more.
Good luck Sweeden. Gang violence is really hard to solve, and the “tough-on-crime” politics is damaging. Here’s hoping you can thread that needle.
How is tough on crime damaging?
From my (cursory understanding) the "tough" portion only works if you're utterly draconian. E.g. if you want to stop jaywalking and put a minimum of two to five years in prison on it, you probably will cut jaywalking by more than 99%.
The level of human rights abuses you'd need to get rid of gangs by merely being draconian would simply not be reconcilable with European laws. For reference: They summary executed/murdered thousands in the Philippines and it didn't work..
If you're classically tough, you have all the side-effects of prison. Prison essentially teaches people to become criminals. After all they get to network with other criminals and also they get traumatized (yes, Swedes prisons are more humane than others, but a cage is a cage).
Basically, what you want it is to make crime an irrational decision but making sure that it doesn't pay of. By that you get all rational people. Against the rest deterrence doesn't work anyway. And in that context it's more important to make sure no one gets to keep any drug money than to jail people.
For reference: They summary executed/murdered thousands in the Philippines and it didn’t work..
El Salvador shows how it can work, of course what went down there also wouldn't fly in Europe but crucially they didn't actually go around and murdered people en masse -- they rather humiliated them and dished out long prison sentences left and right not particularly caring whether they put away innocent people.
The primary goal was to make sure that the country isn't a constant war-zone any more, to get the violence off the streets, and in that the policy succeeded. It was harsh, but not heartless -- all those humiliated and locked-up people do still have chances in life, at least in principle. Parents can hope for their kids instead of mourn them. In other areas Bukele is just as much of an idiot as other techbros. But as far as dictators go he's one of the good ones, so far, whether his long-term legacy will be "tough man who did what he had to do to save the country" or "tough man who tried to save the country and made everything even worse by getting rid of the rule of law" is up in the air. El Salvador might turn into Haiti, into Uruguay, or Singapore. Who knows.
Basically, what you want it is to make crime an irrational decision but making sure that it doesn’t pay of.
That alone isn't enough, you also need to provide alternatives or people are going to take their chance. In El Salvador the situation was so bad that the government didn't really have to do anything in that regard -- once the daily shootouts on the streets are gone people have the opportunity to sell fast food on the street, again, generally do business. But in a European setting mere cracking down won't be enough. Or, in other words: Things aren't nearly bad enough in Sweden to even begin to justify even entertaining the El Salvador solution.
The best criminal policy is social policy.
El Salvador shows how it can work, of course what went down there also wouldn’t fly in Europe but crucially they didn’t actually go around and murdered people en masse – they rather humiliated them and dished out long prison sentences left and right not particularly caring whether they put away innocent people.
Well, in El Salvador it currently looks like it's working. But, as you said, we haven't really seen the outcome yet. I'll give it a few years until I actually admit that it's working.
That alone isn’t enough, you also need to provide alternatives or people are going to take their chance.
Absolutely.
Before making crime a bad solution you first need a non criminal solution to survival. People don't choose criminal violence over a well paid job and a peaceful life, never.
People don’t choose criminal violence over a well paid job and a peaceful life, never.
Well, there's a lot of sociopaths in prison. About a third of the incarcerated population here in Germany iIRc. Those are a little harder to stop since they don't really care much about the peaceful part. But apart from them, yeah people don't tend to chose crime for fun.
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It ends up punishing innocents and has been shown to be counterproductive in combating actual crime rates as well as recidivism.
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It doesn't fix the underlying problem of why people resort to crime. Improving the economical situations of poor people, will go a much longer way in reducing crime rates.
Because it rarely really solves the actual problem while creating a lot of spill on damage and possibly furthering violence. See the US war on drugs or Duterte's mass executions in the Philippines for very drastic examples.
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Because the urge to just have results tends to lead to scapegoating someone and locking them up without actually addressing any of the root causes of crime, IE the cases where people fall through the cracks of society and have no route to stability except by committing crime.
To truly wage war on crime you need to wage war on desperation, something that is nigh impossible to do for most conservatives who just want to solve the problem by building more jails to throw away any hooligans being too noisy.
It is shocking to me how many explosions Sweden has. They had about 90 in 2022 and they were already at 109 before the end of August this year! Basically one gang or another is blowing something up every 2-3 days!
Hah thats nothing, Germany has had 414 detonations in 2020 only related to busting ATMs. [0]
Apparently we had 1645 cases of "Herbeiführen einer Sprengstoffexplosion" which is roughly translated as "causing a detonation of explosives". [1] Many of them were probably not that bad but bad enough that the police got involved. Thats 4.5 cases a day.
On the other hand, sweden is only about 1/8th of the population of germany so that levels these numbers a bit.
Many of them were probably not that bad but bad enough that the police got involved. Thats 4.5 cases a day.
There's absolutely a fuck-ton more than show up in the statistics. Pretty much each time you thought "why are people firing fireworks it's not new year" that's a potential case. Most cases never make it to the police and even then many are probably going to be filed away under "oh that mardy pensioner again, wake us when it's a regular occurrence and you can actually name suspects".
This statistic had never occurred to me before, so I looked up the US.
In 2019, 14,940 explosive related incidents which include 715 explosions of which 251 were bombings.
“Sweden has never before seen anything like this,”
Sweden has since sharply restricted migration levels, citing rising crime levels and other social problems.
I’m personally very pro immigration and think we need to get better at it as climate refugees become more common.
How did things get so bad in Sweden? Like, did they fail to facilitate integration or was there an abnormally high level of criminals among their immigrant population?
Failure to integrate is the right answer. At some point immigrant children ceased to have proper access to proper socio-economic status and a parallel society developed which, Scandinavians being Scandinavians, the majority ignored. It's been a difficult time for the prospects of youth in general but that hit the immigrant population way harder as they're not as embedded in the local social network, no "cousin of a parent owns a repair shop he'll give you a job and tide you over".
Active xenophobia isn't even needed, all that's need is a failure to see and care. It's also generally a urban problem, both because not enough care was taken to encourage immigrants to not be urbanites (a common bias with arrivals is that "city is where the jobs are, rural areas are shitholes" which isn't at all true for Europe in general), as well as urban society generally being ass at reaching out to people, smaller places are way more tight-knit.
Of course, with shit having hit the fan xenophobia then becomes an issue of its own reinforcing the very issues that caused everything, and down the shitchute we go.
Integration should be the responsibility of anyone who enters another country. I wouldn't go to Japan or Germany and expect them to slice off a chunk of their territory and call it America for me.
What part of "children" did you not understand, those were generally born and raised Swedes. But more generally speaking: The appeal to individual responsibility is a cop-out. It's literally the bootstrap argument. What are people to do when there's no fucking bootstraps?
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You can't integrate yourself when you face racism. When the locals put you and all people vaguely your skin color in the same place, it's not them taking the place, it's you giving them the place and abandoning them there.
At some point immigrant children ceased to have proper access to proper socio-economic status and a parallel society developed which, Scandinavians being Scandinavians, the majority ignored
Where is your support for such a claim? All Swedish citizens, regardless of ethnicity or any other factor, have free access to and abundance of social support:
- Free Healthcare
- Free education, including university (you get paid to study)
- Free work coaching and multitude of enrollment programs
- Free financial support for unemployed
- Favorable loans and cheap student housing
In Sweden, you do not get forced into the life of a criminal, it's a choice you make. But in order to integrate, you must be willing, and therein lies the root of the problem.
In Sweden, you do not get forced into the life of a criminal, it’s a choice you make.
No but you might get forced into the life of a perpetually unemployed, be looked down on by nearly everyone the whole of your life. Note how I said "status", not just "money". Noone lives for money alone.
But in order to integrate, you must be willing, and therein lies the root of the problem.
Again these cop-outs. What you say doesn't even begin to make sense. How is someone willing or not willing the root of the problem? That people are or are not willing has causes! Find your root there, continue to investigate, don't cut off you interest at the exact point where you can blame everything on someone else.
Immigrants have the same possibilities as everyone else in Sweden.
So if it's not their willingness to integrate, what is it then?
My god. I live in the country I was born in and even I can see that the odds are not stacked equally for immigrants. Sorry, but it’s hard to take your comment in good faith, hence the downvote.
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I already explained why the possibilities are not the same. Are you going to address that directly, or just assume I don't remember what I said?
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It's hard to even know what to say to this.. Everything you've been saying has been pretty disingenuous, I think it's called virtue signalling.
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I think you're making a very good point with the big city/rural areas argument. I'm sure most people, that have lived abroad would agree that surrounding yourself with people from similar origin is so incredibly easy. And to avoid that in big cities, where such societies are already established, someone has to purposely work on it. And that in itself is much more difficult and much lonelier than the alternative. And if your motivation for moving is solely economical, why would you do that?
Missinformation is how you get a case like Sweden, for the most part. They elected a far right party into government, blaming everything on immigrants and surprise surprise, the far right government has no real solutions to real problems as things worsen further.
Im moving to sweden and from what ive seen and heard its not the immigrants that cause the problem.
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