A report from Norwegian media has revealed that over the last year, around 70 percent of those convicted for violent crimes in Oslo have been immigrants.
Oslo courts have seen a total of 140 individuals convicted of violent crimes and then sentenced in the last year. Two out of three of those convicts have been revealed to be migrants, Norwegian broadcaster TV2 reports.
According to Statistics Norway, the number of immigrants as a part of the total population of Oslo is 33 percent, meaning that in violent crime, immigrants are vastly overrepresented.
The 140 convictions have involved incidents including assaults with weapons such as knives and some of the victims have been left with life-changing injuries.
Researcher Ragnhild Bjørnebekk said that the statistics on migrant crime were unsurprising.
“They are more vulnerable, they have experienced more trauma. Some of them come from violent cultures, and they take it with them. And then there are some of those who are not Oslo residents, who come from other countries and only stay here for a few months,” he said.
Some have blamed the immigration policies and local politicians in Oslo such as City councillor Raymond Johansen who replied to criticisms saying, “We have integration challenges in Norway, but we must look at more than the crime statistics.”
“Immigrant girls do well in higher education. So there we can turn it around and ask why it goes so well with the integration in Norway,” he added.
The Oslo figures mirror those of several other countries including Italy where migrants are believed to account for suspects in one in three crimes nationwide.
Other European countries have seen even higher rates of migrant-background criminality.
In the Austrian capital of Vienna, migrants are suspects in over half of the crimes in the city, while in the German capital of Berlin they are just under half of all suspects. The total migrant population in both cities is less than half.