What’s amazing to me is that the thieves face up to six years in prison for this. I feel like in the US it would be 30 years! Note that I don’t actually know, six years just struck me as short.
The general idea in Sweden used to be that en criminals should become rehabilitated, rather than punished.
The crime rate is much lower than US, but I doubt it's related to the relatively lenient sentences. Right now it seems to attract burglars from our eastern neighbours more than anything else, since they risk 3-4 month in jail compared to up to 10 years...
I also doubt that many people gets "rehabilitated" in Swedish prisons - probably higher risk they are recruited to ISIS. I think the trend is that you either never do another crime again, or you continue until you either die or get old.
Because of that, I would personally like to see much harsher punishments for crimes that involves physical violence (or threats thereof) and especially repeated offences - which is more or less not considered at all in Sweden, just to get rid of the criminals from the streets for longer periods, and also stop the recruiting into the growing number of criminal gangs.
> I also doubt that many people gets "rehabilitated" in Swedish prisons - probably higher risk they are recruited to ISIS. I think the trend is that you either never do another crime again, or you continue until you either die or get old.
Re-offending rates in Sweden have consistently been among the lowest in Europe by a huge margin. As of 2014 it was around the 40% mark, which is exceptionally low.
I'm far from an expert but the first google hit seems to indicate that the re-offending rate is higher in Sweden than in US, and on par with the rest of EU, except the other Nordic countries that have half the rate.
The paper looks legit. The numbers are not directly comparable, so they are probably just indicative. You might be an expert, so please correct me if that's the case.
Except for Singapore, the countries at the top have a strong welfare state. Singapore might have a strong judicial system (and good education) instead. The countries are also all quite small.
Here are the reported 2-year reconviction rates.
Norway 20%
Iceland 27%
Singapore 27%
Denmark 29%
Finland 36%
US 36%
Canada 41%
Sweden 43%
Scotland(1yr) 46%
N.Ireland 47%
Germany 48%
Netherlands 48%
Ireland 51%
France 59%
England/Wales 59%
Why Sweden comes out exceptionally bad compared to it closest neighbors is unfortunately not studied, and the authors are intrigued by this fact.
I'm not though; If there is an actual difference, I would guess it's related to difference in crime rate in general, which is basically caused by the much higher immigration.
It's not the crown jewels. It's a set of "royal jewels" that were crown jewels for a past king. They're not the crown jewels that are in use by the current royal family.
