[vidarh]

I find it amusing that you warn of the political spin, yet cite as facts and link to an article that cites a "study" done for a TV show with no specifics about methods used or classification criteria given.

Why should we assign any more trust to just those numbers?

[draugadrotten]

I presented an english-language article talking about the topic.

What I care about here is that the law enforcement should get better IRL. I don't care at all if you "trust" anything here, faceless HN user vidarh.I simply presented a fact for you to use or ignore.

There's quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden, however they are in Swedish. Public service radio, just to pick one: http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artik...

I'm sure you know how to use google to find more of the same. Have fun and please share the truth if you find it out there.

[vidarh]

I'm Norwegian, so the Swedish article is not a problem.

The Swedish article you linked presents a far more nuanced picture and gives even more reasons to question the other link you gave.

It does not say anything about the number of crimes committed, so we can't really used this one to look at that. But it does on the other give a number of possible explanations for why the percentage of "solved" crimes dropped, though notably the article only refers to a drop versus the same period the previous year - it says nothing about longer term trends.

However what it says is interesting:

* The number of particularly complicated crimes, such as IT related crimes, have risen, though it gives no numbers. This claim is so fuzzy that it doesn't really tell us much, unfortunately.

* The police have reduced their focus on traffic related crimes, which includes a lot of easy to solve crimes. E.g. frequent traffic-stops will "net" a lot of crimes that are instantly solved at the same time as you identify the crime. By catching people drunk driving, or driving too fast, for example. Whether or not this change is good or bad really depends on whether it coincides with more accidents etc. If it doesn't, then one might argue the police and legislative have been overzealous about this in the past.

* In terms of drug related crimes, enforcement has shifted from users to dealers. "Solving" drug crimes is much easier when it involves going around and hassling vulnerable, highly visible addicts - where again the crime will be registered mainly if it is solved at the same time, by catching someone with drugs, - vs. tracking down dealers. Some of us would say this shift is distinctly positive even though it makes the numbers look worse.

* At the same time the article points out that numbers for some crimes that have a much more direct effect on the general public, such robberies of homes and, as a follow on, resale of stolen property, have improved.

So many of the crimes they have de-emphasised which previously scored them many easily solved crimes, are victim-less crimes or have no direct victims, and it is not clear that the reduction in solved crimes there is a problem at all. The shift in enforcement especially when it comes to drugs is in line with international shifts in attitudes. The freed up resources have seemingly been funnelled into crimes that have more serious effects on the general public, but which require more resources - such as the effort to identify key individuals tied to break-ins etc. and following them up intensively. This has been done specifically in response to policy decisions by the government, that have asked for a focus on these types of more complex crimes, and so gives even less reason to justify any claim about "abysmal Police work".

No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes, nor any idea of massively rising crime. It doesn't disprove it either - it is largely orthogonal to the original claims.

I wish I had time to dig around, but I don't. I do find it interesting that you chose this article to illustrate, though, if there's "quite a few recent articles about the abysmal Police work in Sweden", as it doesn't really address the issues.

[draugadrotten]

> No part of the article supports any kind of idea of a crisis in the Swedish police's ability to solve crimes

I can't be reading the same article as you, but I'll leave it at that.

Since you claim to read Swedish, try this google search for Swedish police solves fewer crimes: https://www.google.se/#q=svensk+polis+l%C3%B6ser+f%C3%B6rre+...

I paraphrase the first few hits:

- Despite more money, fewer crimes a solved (SVT.SE) - The police solves fewer crimes despite new billions (DN.SE) - Police solves fewer crimes than ever (Aftonbladet) - Police increasingly worse at solving crimes (Expressen) - Finnish police solves 80% - Swedish solves 17% (Exponerat) - Swedish police solves even fewer crimes (HBL.FI)

and the list goes on.

I can't be reading the same internet as you, if you can't find quote a few recent articles about the abysmal police work in Sweden.

[Xylakant]

Since you already admitted that you liked my source I assume that you also read the introductory page which contains this enlightening paragraph at the top [1]:

Comparisons between countries that are based on their individual crime statistics require caution since such statistics are produced differently in different countries. Criminal statistics do not provide a simple reflection of the level of crime in a given country.

Criminal statistics are influenced by both legal and statistical factors, and by the extent to which crime is reported and registered. These factors can vary from one country to another. There are no international standards for how crime statistics should be produced and presented and this makes international comparisons difficult.

The comparison with Finnland doesn't hold. Also the 17% you quote directly contradicts the 6% in your earlier article, at least one of the two can't be right.

Then again, the GP doesn't contradict the assertion that the overall ratio is now lower than a year ago. You're nit refuting his point. His argument is that the police now concentrates less on easily solvable crimes that have little effect on the general population but rather on more difficult crimes with significant effect on the general population - which in my book is a good thing. Tying police success or failure to a statistic that measures something only tangentially related is a mistake, albeit a common one, even in high profile newspapers. (cue rant about journalism today).

http://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statisti...

[berntb]

Comparisons with Sweden is probably hard.

I seriously think of Swedish media as something out of Animal Farm these days. Or 1984.

I got vertigo a month or so ago, when the editor of DN (largest non-tabloid, or so they claim) discuss how good news are never big news, but bad news are. About the same time I saw in Forskning & Framsteg that the group rape statistics has increased fourfold since the 1990s. That had not been discussed at all in the media.

Lots of other examples exists.