The Ministry of Justice of Sweden noticed last month a press release (look HERE) about their new sexual offense legislation, setting up higher standards for the concept of consent and introducing in their law system two new offenses, “negligent rape” and “negligent sexual abuse“. The fundamental idea is that there has to be always an explicit consent before having sex, no matter the situation. It’s a positive change, a sign of awareness about the rising incidence of sexual offenses. Hopefully, it is destined to raise the stakes against all the sexual crimes in all Europe.
Question: what causes the increment in the sexual-related crimes in Sweden?
If you have some spare time and if you’re curious about what’s going on in that beautiful country, try to look at this press release (link HERE). It’s about “measures against car burnings and criminality in vulnerable areas”, a joint effort of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for Home Affairs. Maybe it’s just me, but “vulnerable areas” sounds like the political jargon for “no-go zones”. The Minister for Home Affairs, Anders Ygeman, is quoted in this way:
“It is unacceptable that the police and emergency services are subjected to attacks. The insecurity and risks that people living in vulnerable areas are exposed to must be combated in all possible ways.”
For a government that formally denies the existence of no-go zones, this is quite an affirmation. The date of this press release was August, 17th 2017.
Question: what causes the existence of no-go zones in Sweden?
The same government is also enforcing a higher level of internal border controls, useful for detecting potential terrorists and other criminals who enter the Schengen area thru the EU’s external borders (Italy, Greece, Malta). Such controls are renewed every six months or so, the last press about it release can be found here. Sweden is also known for their extensive legislation about asylum regulations and the related rights to assistance. Such laws have been remodeled in 2015 (here) and 2016 (here).
Question: why do they need to apply these changes?
All the questions reported above are rhetoric, of course. It is a large number of refugees and asylum seekers in a matter of very few years that drive all these changes in the legislation, not to mention the drastic changes in the everyday’s life for many citizens. For a country with a population of roughly 10 million people, it’s a huge task to integrate hundreds of thousands of newcomers. Even for one of the most advanced countries in the world, there are practical limits.
Label me as a racist if you want, but the data are consistent enough to establish a direct relationship between a high density of foreigners in the urban areas and the rising numbers in the crime-related statistics.
The welfare system, one of the most advanced in the whole world, is also stressed far beyond its limits by the new requests. It’s quite easy to say that it will collapse in a few years without drastic measures.
The non-rhetoric question is: how could Sweden turn back the tide?
Angelo Benuzzi 
A noticeable problem that I can see here is that, no matter how well you manage your internal affairs, sooner or later you have to take in consideration also the rest of the world. There are some kind of problems that are by their nature global, and should be solved globally.
Building walls, being them physical or even merely metaphorical, could appear to be a temporary solution, but in the long term I don’t think that it would solve this kind of problems.
No answer is easy, isn’t it? A government, any government, should answer to its citizens and then dispose of any other matter. That’s my idea. Anyway, the situation in Sweden is gone far over the limits, crime statistics are impressive.
There are definitely no easy answers, you are totally right. History and geopolitics are complex matters.