According to a survey by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), around half of students avoid certain people, activities and areas due to a fear of being the victims of crime.
The school survey, which questioned 6,000 students across the country, revealed at 56 per cent of girls and 46 per cent of boys were so concerned about becoming victims of crime in their everyday lives that they place various limitations on where they can go and who they interact with.
Anna Gavell Frenzel, an investigator at the National Council for Crime Prevention, told broadcaster SVT: “It is worrying that there are so many students who feel anxious and it is problematic that you feel that you cannot do certain things out of concern about being subjected to crime.”
48 per cent of the students stated that they had been the victims of some sort of crime.
Investigator Frenzel noted an overlap between those who have committed crimes and those who have been victims, saying two-thirds of those who have committed crime had also been the victims of it.
Few students actually report being the victims of crimes to the police, according to the survey, with just a third of those who claim to have been the victims of theft saying they had filed a report with the police.
The survey comes after a wave of so-called “humiliation robberies” — which are said to often involve migration-background attackers and young victims.
The robberies are often followed by the victims being forced to perform humiliating acts of degradation such as kissing the feet of their attackers.
Following an outcry from the public, Brå claimed that it would investigate any possible links between migration and the trend of youth robberies in November of last year.
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