Monday, November 19, 2007

Swedish Mafia Gains Traction

Well just to keep going with my Swedish justice posts I thought I’d pop out one more. Just a quick little one on the Swedish Mafia. Yup. Sweden has a mafia. And apparently it is growing which is of great concern to the police. As it should be. It should probably be more of a concern to the common Swede but they might still be caught in their age of innocence.

Regardless, organized crime is growing in Sweden. And because of the growth the Swedish police are lobbying for a Swedish version of the FBI. The FBI of course is famed for its work against organized crime dating back to the times of the romanticized gangsters like Al Capone, who I believe is sometimes credited with coining the term “G-Men.” Anyway, here in Sweden, all kinds of classic organized crimes are being committed. Of course, your classic extortion. Even some good old fashioned kidnapping.

A common misconception is that these crimes are being committed by non-Swedes. Basically the immigrants coming to this country from former communist countries. This doesn’t seem to be the case and it seems that the majority of Swedish crime is being committed by… Swedes. This revelation actually smacks in the face of some of those people who just aren’t willing to admit that Swedes would ever do anything wrong. This view though can be seen the world over. The others are always to blame. It was better before they came. Always. But, usually, when things actually get looked at it turns out that this isn’t the case. Jingoism, nationalism, racism, whatever. It pops up a lot.

But with all this organized crime the Swedes are still showing off a little bit of their innocence. No one is really sure why gangs are popping up. But as The Local reports, there are some good ideas being thrown around. And these ideas resulted in one of my favorite quotes of the article: "’Maybe it's simply because more people like to be in gangs. There hasn't been any studies done on this’, says Henrik Tham.” Well, there you have it - people like to be in gangs so they join them. It’s so simple. Yup, Welcome to Sweden.

3 comments:

  1. it's probably true that more of the crimes committed in Sweden are committed by native Swedes but still there is a significantly higher percentage of immigrants or children of immigrants that have committed crimes and have served time than the percentage of native Swedes.

    Ps. Henrik Tham - what a wise man :P

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  2. i can tell you that most people in sweden that is involved in organized crime isn't ethnic swedes
    the bikers gang are mostly swedish (and mixed in larger cities) but most are jugoslavian or middle eastern (they might be swedish citizens but they're not ethnic swedes)

    in gothenburg where i live the biggest gangs are the bandidos (mixed), hell's angels (mixed), O.G's (mainly middle eastern) and Naserligan/the Naser league (mainly jugoslavian or albanian)

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  3. Good comments here. Very interesting in that they both have differing views. Either way, gang crimes are on the rise especially in cities like Göteborg and Malmö.

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