RELATION BETWEEN CRIME AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES A NARRATIVE LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE PERIOD OF 2015-2020 DIANA MADSEN Degree Project in Criminology Malmö University 15 Credits Two-year Мaster Faculty of Health and Society Programme 205 06 Malmö June 2021 RELATION BETWEEN CRIME AND IMMIGRATION IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES A NARRATIVE LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE PERIOD OF 2015-2020 DIANA MADSEN Madsen, D. Relation between Crime and Immigration in the Nordic countries. A Narrative Literature Review on the period of 2015-2020. Degree project in Сriminology 15 Credits. Malmö University: Faculty of Health and Society, Department of Health and Society, 2021. The period 2015-2020 has remained limitless in terms of missing data on crime and immigration in the Nordic countries, starting from the number of irregular and undocumented migrants and asylum seekers, continuing with the underrepresented immigrant statistics in crime. This paper consists of a complex understanding of immigration processes across the Nordic region, establishing narrow themes associated with crime and immigration. The findings of this paper presented five essential links to the criminality among the immigrant population in the Nordic countries during 2015-2020, that were compiled from the majority of the current available studies in this research field. At this point, the paper represents official data from the Nordic countries and a narrow literature review of recent studies, which depicted immigrants as more often suspected of crimes compared to the ethnic populations, assuming that it could have established a false social identity of an individual with foreign background. The reason of that supposition is explained by the findings on migrants to be overrepresented in crime, biased “immigrant beliefs” and yet evident immigrant labelling. Keywords: crime; criminal policy; Nordic countries; forensic immigrant patients; immigrant labelling; marginalization; immigrant beliefs; heterogeneity. 1 Table of Content Introduction 3 Aim 4 Background 5 Definitions 6 Previous Research 6 Method 8 Inclusion and Exclusion criteria 9 Ethical considerations 10 Results 10 Heterogeneity and Overrepresented Statistics on Immigrant 10 Crime in the Nordics Immigrants in an irregular situation and undocumented 12 migrants in the Nordics Immigrant Beliefs and Labelling in the Nordic context 13 Mental health of immigrants in the Nordic countries 16 Crime Policy in the Nordic countries 17 Discussion and Conclusion 18 Research Limitations 20 References 21 Appendices 28 2 Introduction Presently, the subject of migration and crime in the Nordic countries is discussed rather pointedly (Adamson, 2020) and negative attitudes towards ethnic and cultural diversity of migrant population have increased in recent years (Ahmadi et al., 2020). For instance, immigration is the sole aspect that affects negatively native Swedes’ attitudes when it comes to the Swedish welfare state model (Eger, 2010). Even though the Scandinavia and, especially Sweden, have been for a long time as the countries that are very open and positively-minded to immigrant populations (Blom, 2010; Turner & Cross, 2015; Bentsen, 2017), the controverse and negative public opinions are present yet (Statista Research Department, 2019). Such opposing views are associated for the most part with criminality, which is perhaps not surprising when the official crime statistics on immigrants in the Nordic countries is overrepresented (Vasiljevic et al., 2020; Kardell, 2010; Merill & Åkerlund, 2018; Hällsten et al., 2013). Not long ago the Swedish government, having a positive attitude towards foreigners, decided that every application where the victim, suspect or interviewed person is a migrant must be marked with a special code “291” ‘Resurs/relation kod’ (R291) (Rosenstam & Kjellman Wall, 2016). This secrecy decision was made by the police commissioner in the emergency department, which came into force in 2015 during the massive influx of migrants but, nevertheless, became known to the Swedish media afterwards. Therefore, officially all reports made to the Swedish police in connection with violence, threats, arson and other crimes involving migrants were confidentially classified for journalists and the public, while some information on the most appalling crime events could be found only in the media. So-called ‘police censorship’ on immigrant crimes exists not only in Sweden, but in the other Western countries, with more or less extent, depending on the political situation of the certain government (Bunikowski, 2016; Keskinen, 2011; Löfgren Nilsson & Örnebring, 2016; Couttenier et al., 2019). This ‘censorship regime’ in Sweden functioned from October 2015 and ended in February 2016 (Rosenstam & Kjellman Wall, 2016). During this period, 5645 crime reports were concealed under the R291 code. These are not the crimes themselves, but only filed police reports. Outside of this code R291, the Swedish police received 556,439 reports during the same period, but these were only appeals and not actual cases of crimes. By mid- February 2016, the police regarded only a part of appeals and crimes connected 3 with 420 refugees and asylums. From the full period, they selected an interval from November 2015 to January 2016 and reported the following results in the Årsredovisning 2015 (a yearly report of 2015) (Polismyndigheten, 2015; 2016; Ghersetti & Odén, 2017; Jernbro & Nilson, 2016): In total, out of 4000 appeals, in all 1799 turned out to be crime cases: 831 beatings in shelters, 484 threats and humiliations, 37 sexual crimes (the number of them classified as rapes was not disclosed). There was a separate analysis of crimes done not in shelters, but committed by refugees against local citizens, in total of 1329 crimes: 427 thefts, 223 threats and humiliation, 184 beatings, 72 drug crimes, 54 economic crimes, 53 sexual crimes (the number of rapes is not specified). As a result of media’s coverage during this so-called censorship regime, it became usual for people to relate crime and immigration in Sweden since the unexpectedly high number of newcomers during the period of 2014-2016, that was accompanied with the same unpredicted increase in reported crimes and severe violence (Armengol Rodriguez, 2020). However, both disputed matters as crime and immigration are compound issues and need to be first studied in a detail in order to make strong statements later. Hence, binding simultaneous increase in immigration and crime rates during the last years may involve a lot of other correlated factors into one complex process, apart from these above-mentioned two. Aim The aim of this paper is to study relation between crime and immigration in the Nordic countries during the period from 2015 to 2020, to analyse and summarise the available knowledge that had been developed in the selected study field, to highlight the main themes and to define research gaps for the future studies. Thus, the main research questions in this paper are: 1) Which issues are being currently discussed in the research on crime and immigration in the Nordic countries? 2) What were the main differences of delinquency in the Nordic countries in the period of 2015-2020? 3) What is the context of crime policy in the Nordic countries? 4) How could relation to crime and immigration be explained in the Nordic countries? 4 Background Tracing a volume of migration in Sweden from 2015 to 2020, a substantial increase in immigration is evident with insignificant changes in the volume of emigration, leading to a stable growth in the migration balance (Statistiska Centralbyrån, 2015). Migration statistics showed a steady increase among immigrants since 2015, with a sharp shift of 30,000 people in 2016. At the same time, emigration increased in 2015 and abruptly decreased in 2016. Thus, the migration balance in 2016 increased suddenly by ca. 40,000 people, which could be attributed primarily to the migration crisis in Europe, causing a massive influx of refugees from the affected countries, especially from Syria, at that time. However, the official statistics offer approximate data on migration and do not provide reliable information on the number of migrants in irregular situations. Obviously, given the size of Sweden's population, the country receives a significant number of migrants, occupying a leading position in the world in terms of the number of migrants received per capita. On the contrary, in Norway a background of the emigration growth during the reviewed period increased from 37,474 people in 2015 to 40,724 people in 2016 (Statistiska Centralbyrån, 2017). Consequently, there was a decrease in the number of immigrants (from 67,276 in 2015 to 66,800 in 2016), which significantly reduced the migration balance. Thus, over the period from 2015 to 2016, the migration balance almost halved, declining from 29,802 to 26,076. In Denmark, after a peak in 2015, there was a drastic decline in 2016 to 4,748 people, caused by a sudden incline in the number of emigrants (61,078 compared to 56,340 in 2015) (Statistics Denmark, 2021). In Finland there has been a stable growth in emigration, with an increase in 2016 to 34,905 people (Statistics Finland, 2017). Accordingly, the lowest indicator of the migration balance was registered in 2015 in the amount of 12,441 people. Based on the comparative statistical data, it can be concluded that Sweden has experienced the greatest change in the composition of the population based on the migration balance and received the largest number of migrants in comparison with the other Nordic countries. Meanwhile, before the onset of the refugee crisis in Europe, numerous groups of migrants arrived to Sweden through the Øresund Bridge and the Øresund Strait omitting staying in Denmark (Rytter, 2013; Norocel et al., 2020; Haugen et al., 2018). At the same time, the refugee crisis caused a 5 significant impact on the region as a whole and only Norway managed to avoid a critical situation that led to a decrease in the number of immigrants. Definitions It should be once again emphasized, that there is no definition of a ‘migrant’ under international law yet (IOM, 2019).