[ibsathish]

This is a pure political gimmick to project their country as one of the safest/crime-free countries. As many have said here, Police is run by the Government and they have the right to manipulate the data.

As a general statistic, if you google it, you'll know the crime rate has been increasing in the last few years. They either fell into dumb ears or they make up by letting the criminals out.

What's the point?

[hobbe80]

You seem to have a very loose understanding of how the Swedish society works. The Police is not "run by the Government" - it's role in the Swedish society is directed by Polislagen (The Police Law). The Government directs (as it does with all governmental departments) Rikspolisstyrelsen (The National Police Board) via broad (and public) assignments and budgets.

The Government (or the Police) have of course no right to manipulate the data - in Sweden more or less all data is publicly available, and manipulation of crime statistics would be something very noteworthy (and likely to cause a big scandal).

And finally, if you google it, you'll know that crime rates have been decreasing in the last few years (few years meaning 2-3, and looking at all categories of crimes). Over a 10 year period, some categories of crimes have risen (at least the number of reported crimes have risen), and others, like homicide have markedly declined.

[ibsathish]

Totally agree and buy your points. But the point of downsizing the number of jails is what concerns me. Forget crimes in a larger scale or others like homicide, but minor crimes which are still punishable offenses would be in the rise as more and more the mankind evolves, crimes in any country would also evolve.

Obviously, so does the legal system but people are smart enough to find loopholes and find a way to do.

[jeltz]

Almost all of the increase in reported crimes is due to a few specific crimes being reported more now and population growth. Most violent crimes have been decreasing and when asking youths in surveys much fewer admit having participated in crimes compared to when I was the same age.