Sweden broke a record with 60 dead in 2022
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sixty people have been shot dead in Sweden this year, a record in modern times, the government said on Monday.
Sweden has suffered an epidemic of shootings in recent years that police and authorities blame on criminal gangs operating in cities such as the capital Stockholm.
– Deadly gun violence has increased and has unfortunately set a new, bloody record this year, says Minister of Justice Gunnar Strommer to reporters.
Strommer said Sweden’s sixty deaths this year compared to four in Norway, four in Denmark and two in Finland. The deaths are the tip of an iceberg of violence and organized crime that has set deep roots in parts of society, Strommer said.
Last year, 45 people were shot dead in Sweden. In 2012, there was a total of 17, according to the Crime Prevention Council.
Strommer said the government would now set up a special council within the Ministry of Justice to coordinate the fight against gang crime.
“No decent society can accept someone being shot dead once a week … on the open street,” Strommer said.
Sweden has gone from having one of the lowest incidences of gang violence to one of the highest in the past 20 years, according to the Crime Prevention Council.
The previous Social Democrat-led government beefed up an under-resourced police force and introduced tougher penalties for gun crimes, including to combat gang crime.
But its failure to reverse the trend was one of the main reasons it lost elections in September to a right-wing coalition that promised even tougher measures.
The current government has said it wants to set up stop-and-frisk zones, double penalties for gang-related crime and expand authorities’ ability to intercept criminals as part of what Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said was the biggest. effort to combat organized crime in modern Swedish history.
(Reporting by Simon Johnson, Editing by Ed Osmond)