Sweden's crime problem

This sounds like a description of Somalia or some other hellhole, but it’s Sweden. Sweden!!

Gunnar Strömmer, Sweden’s justice minister, calls gang crime “a systematic threat to society” on a par with or above that posed by terrorism. On a visit to Gothenburg, Sweden’s second city, he notes that almost a year has gone by since a deadly shooting there.

So bad was the country’s reputation that politicians in neighbouring Denmark and Norway talked about “Swedish conditions” as shorthand for everything they did not want — spiralling crime after a period of almost unchecked immigration. Swedish gangs prospered, using digital platforms to offer 12, 13 and 14-year-olds cash to commit murders or bombings, at home or abroad.

“Crime has been one of our main exports,” says Alexander Wallenius, lead investigator at the police’s national operations department, of a country more used to touting the success of its start-ups or music industry. He adds that the “No shooting” headline “should be the normal. It is a sign that the trend has changed.”