No, Rapes In Sweden Are Not Up by 70%
I’ve only been to Sweden a couple, maybe six times, but something was striking me as just wrong with the Breitbart story on Swedish rapes rising 70 percent in a year.
ERMAHGERD! That’s like, totally GHERSTLY! What could be behind this? Some digging shows it: The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet, or Brå) put out its English-language estimate of crimes in Sweden.
In the English-language summary, based on reported crimes, Brå estimated that the populace “exposed” to sexual assault rose from 1% to 1.7% in 2016.
Wow. from 1% to 1.7% actually is a 70% increase. And Breitbart’s Liam Deacon (best recent headline: “Transgender Killer Moved from Female Prison after Sex with Inmates”) wrote about it on January 11. He’s not wrong, is he? I mean, if Brå said it, it must be right, right?
Still, that’s a weird way to do crime statistics, huh? “From 1% to 1.7% of the population,” “exposed” to a crime type?
A little, you know, reading, brings a lot of enlightenment. In the original Swedish (no, I don’t, but I have me some Google, and I like statistics, so stay with me, I source everything I say), we see that Brå was, like, a lot more specific:
In 2016, “Antalet anmälda våldtäkter ökade med 13 procent till 6 560 brott,” Brå proclaims, “medan anmälda brott om sexuellt tvång och utnyttjande minskade med 1 procent till 1 240,” they said.
Which means, “The number of reported rapes increased by 13%, to 6,560, while the number of reports of sexual coersion and exploitation declined by 1%, to 1,240.”
The increase was year-over-year. That was partly because reported rapes in 2015 had declined by 12% over 2014 numbers, from 6,700 to 5,920.“Antalet anmälda våldtäkter minskade med 12 procent till 5 920 brott. Minskningen förklaras delvis av att statistiken för 2014 innehöll ett stort ärende med många våldtäktsbrott.”
OK, so that’s totes more specific and a lot more palatable than 70%.
But wait! Again!
It turns out that, in 2014, reported rapes had increased by 11%: “…anmälda våldtäkterna ökade med 11 procent till 6 700 brott. Anmälda brott om grov kvinnofridskränkning minskade till 2 000 anmälda brott (–7 %), medan grov fridskränkning ökade till 1 770 anmälda brott (+2 %).”
Or, “…reported rapes increased by 11 percent, to 6,700. Reported “gross violations of women” decreased to 2,000 offenses, while “gross violation of integrity” increased 2%, to 1,770 reported offenses.”
Thus, comparing 2016 figures of 6,560 reported rapes to 2014 figures of 6,700 reported rapes, we see a decrease of 2.08% AFTER Sweden began taking in such large numbers of refugees.
Say! Let’s look at that as a graphical representation, hmm?
Oh, snap.
It also seems as if Brå, like the FBI, may have done some changing prior to 2014 as to exactly how it calculates and reports on sexual assault numbers, which would result in some fluctuations - note the differences in language (“gross violations of women” in 2014, versus “sexual coersion” in 2016, etc.)
But the one thing that seems clear is that in Sweden, you can bet your sweet Smörgåsbord that rapes are not up by 70% year-over-year.