A naive person may be fooled into thinking that, say, the actual number of rapes per capita increased substantially, especially recently. This is likely untrue. For example:
"In Sweden, the definition of rape has been successively widened over the years, leading to an ever larger number of sexual assaults being classified as rape.[3][13][14][32] For example, in 1992 a legislative change came into force which shifted the dividing line between sexual assault and rape. This legislative change resulted in about a 25% increase in the level of registered rape offences.[12]"
That explains a spike 1992-1993 and 2004-2005, but how do you explain that it has almost doubled since 2005? It's not really plausible that there has been a legislative change basically every year since then.
1. Sweden's data reflects year of report, not year of offense.
2. Sweden's government has, in recent years, embarked on a substantial campaign directed at encouraging rape reporting to deal with the (widely globally recognized) problem of underreporting of rape.
Classification and reporting of crime is really, really messy. There could be a host of factors to explain the doubling, even if actual crime was on the decrease. Population statistics are tricky like that, because they can't accurately account for all the classes they wish to measure.
For example, most countries have atrociously poor reporting rates for sexual crimes -- I've heard estimates that 90%+ go unreported, even in liberal Western democracies. So, with the widening of the Swedish law and a corresponding increase in outreach by the authorities, the rise you see might simply be an increase in reporting. Maybe more victims are coming forward and filing a police report. Perhaps more women feel confident that their case will be treated equitably.
Of course, such societal shifts in attitude take time. You wouldn't expect a stair-step plot because it's unreasonable to assume that the whole population would suddenly start trusting the legal system X% more. Trust is earned. And so, as outreach continues and victims notice other victims coming forward and being helped, they gain courage.
So that's one of many hypothetical explanations in which actual sexual assaults are committed less frequently, but the statistics report a rise. There is the real possibility that this could all be attributable to a sort of survivorship bias.
At any rate, I'm worried at the kneejerk "blame the immigrants" reaction by some commenters. Let's not start pointing fingers without data. There's enough xenophobic rage swirling around already.
I live in Sweden (moved there from Germany in 2006). The presence of the topic of rape in the media and public debate instantly surprised me. It has always been a topic of great concern to the Swedes, which I noted as being very different to Germany. In very simple terms, Swedes, due to the advanced state of gender equality (in comparison to most other countries, including Germany), are highly sensitive to occurences which might be associated with the act of rape. That, over time, inevitably leads to increased reports of acts of (possible) rape which would not be reported in countries in which awareness is weak, the law forgiving and in which shame and honor count so much.
Understanding Swedish rape statisics requires understanding a cultural aspect and the context that this statistic is embedded in.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 43.3 ms ] thread"In Sweden, the definition of rape has been successively widened over the years, leading to an ever larger number of sexual assaults being classified as rape.[3][13][14][32] For example, in 1992 a legislative change came into force which shifted the dividing line between sexual assault and rape. This legislative change resulted in about a 25% increase in the level of registered rape offences.[12]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden
1. Sweden's data reflects year of report, not year of offense.
2. Sweden's government has, in recent years, embarked on a substantial campaign directed at encouraging rape reporting to deal with the (widely globally recognized) problem of underreporting of rape.
For example, most countries have atrociously poor reporting rates for sexual crimes -- I've heard estimates that 90%+ go unreported, even in liberal Western democracies. So, with the widening of the Swedish law and a corresponding increase in outreach by the authorities, the rise you see might simply be an increase in reporting. Maybe more victims are coming forward and filing a police report. Perhaps more women feel confident that their case will be treated equitably.
Of course, such societal shifts in attitude take time. You wouldn't expect a stair-step plot because it's unreasonable to assume that the whole population would suddenly start trusting the legal system X% more. Trust is earned. And so, as outreach continues and victims notice other victims coming forward and being helped, they gain courage.
So that's one of many hypothetical explanations in which actual sexual assaults are committed less frequently, but the statistics report a rise. There is the real possibility that this could all be attributable to a sort of survivorship bias.
At any rate, I'm worried at the kneejerk "blame the immigrants" reaction by some commenters. Let's not start pointing fingers without data. There's enough xenophobic rage swirling around already.
Understanding Swedish rape statisics requires understanding a cultural aspect and the context that this statistic is embedded in.
https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/2/
Rape and sex offenses in general should be prorated by an age-filtered subset of the total male population.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5195/sweden-rape