Sweden will employ hundreds of new police officers in an effort to tackle a growing trend of sexual offences against vulnerable people and children.
Mats Löfving, head of the police’s national operational department, Noa, commented on the new policy saying: “For me, this is incredibly big, I think it is the biggest and most important investment I have had in my time in the police. It is perhaps the most vulnerable group that we are helping, women and children, who are exposed to violent and sexual offences,” Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Radio reports.
According to police, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Crime Prevention Council, the number of sexual offences within relationships and where children are victims, is increasing with only half of the reported rape cases in Sweden seeing any kind of resolution.
Around 350 officers are expected to be recruited in the autumn and will be sent across the country to different regions to bolster the number of investigators looking into sexual crimes.
The initiative is expected to cost around 304 million SEK (£25,467,600/$32,131,280) with some of the money also going to the National Forensic Centre to invest in officer education on sexual offences.
According to a report from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) released in January, the number of rape reports increased by eight per cent in 2018, while the number of offences in which children were victims increased by 13 per cent, with there being a 33 per cent increase in the number of rape cases over the last decade.
The link between mass migration and sex attacks has been a hotly contested subject in Sweden with the government last releasing figures on the issue in 2005. In April, Brå announced that due to public demand, they would be conducting new research into the issue of migration and crime with a tentative release date of 2021 for the report.
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