A Swedish news outlet has revealed that 17 of 32 gang leaders committing violence in Stockholm were born overseas, with the other 15 born in Sweden but from migration backgrounds.
The 32 men are believed to be leaders of various criminal gangs in the Swedish capital and have been the focus of Stockholm police as part of Operation Rimfrost, a nationwide police operation to tackle the growing violence among gangs in Sweden, according to an Expressen analysis quoted in a Nyheter Idag report.
Of the 15 gang members who were born in Sweden, just one is said to have a Swedish-born parent, while the rest reportedly have parents who migrated to Sweden.
“I’m not naive. There are other crimes where the deportation and migration issues are more relevant, but when it comes to the leadership layers of the worst criminal gangs in Stockholm, it is obviously a failed integration,” Expressen journalist Fredrik Sjöshult wrote.
The report echoes a prior report in the city of Malmo in September of last year that revealed the majority of the shooting suspects in the multicultural southern Swedish city were also from migration backgrounds.
A total of 20 cases were reviewed by Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan, which found that 14 of the 20 individuals were born to parents who had migrated to Sweden from Africa, the Middle East, or elsewhere.
While some have pointed to a lack of integration, ghettoisation of no-go suburbs, and other immigration factors to explain the rise in gang violence, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has rejected such claims.
In November, the Swedish leader stated: “The segregation is because there is too low employment and too high unemployment in these areas. But that would have been the same regardless of who had lived there. If you put people born in Sweden under the same conditions, you get the same result.”
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