 Hello, what's poppin'? We are on Twitch. We are live. So you can come join us if you want. If not, that's cool. Just leave a like, comment, subscribe, turn on your post notification bells. Let's continue to grow the family from Chicago to the UK and all around the world because we taking a trip today. But hold on, if you missed our live and you wanna get any highlights, you can just go to Twitch and watch the live over again or, you know what I'm saying? Patreon Monday through Friday. And we also got merch, got mine on. We're going to Sweden though. This is a question that I've always had. How did one of the safest countries on earth develop a huge gang problem? And I hate to say this. Ah, this is one of the rare times that I'm gonna contribute music to it. Music had to be some of the reason. Music has to be some of the reasons that Sweden developed a gang problem. I love Sweden, RIP in here. But I ain't know y'all for, I've known y'all for grassy plains, a field, you know what I'm saying? Sheep, nice looking women. I ain't know nothing. But let's get into it, talk to me. Who is this by? Hold on. Wait, first of all, this is by World Graphics. Okay. Salute, Gango. It's just a few short years ago. The word Sweden brought to mind positive stereotypes, stuff like flat-pack furniture, abber and enlightened social democracy. From afar, the country seemed a quiet paradise, the sort of place where crime was low and people really might keep their doors unlocked tonight. Of course, the reality was always a bit more complicated than that. Biker gangs and far-right thugs were active and the police were so laid back, they once failed to solve the assassination of their own prime minister. By and large though, Sweden was seen as calm and safe. But note the key word in that sentence was because today the word Sweden brings to mind not positive connotations, but relentlessly grim ones, stuff. No, no, no. It still brings to mind positive connotations to America at least, but maybe not out there, but like, American stuff in Sweden isn't exactly that sweet. But talk to us. Of like firearm homicides, grenade attacks and staggering levels of gang violence, stuff like 13-year-old killers and houses destroyed in bomb blasts. Stuff that, in 2023, is threatening to tear this once-placid nation apart. With gang warfare so out of control that the military has been called in, it now feels like a good time to ask, how did this happen? How did the land of IKEA and Nichols become Europe's gun-murder capital? And more importantly, can things ever go back to how they were before? Looking hard to support your family, but never getting a... Now, the first thing to know when talking about gun and gang violence in Sweden is that it's still far below American levels. If you're watching this from a typical US big city, just know that you are way more likely to get shot dead within a few miles of home than you are visiting Stockholm or Gotham. Hey, chill. You're right, though. That's why I keep a guard very close to me. Continue. Fuck. That said, by European standards, Sweden's firearm crime rate is crazy high. Across 2022, this Nordic country of 10.4 million recorded 391 shootings resulting in over 60 deaths. Per capita, that ranks Sweden as the joint worst EU nation for firearms murders alongside Croatia. But it's only when you start to compare... Croatia? Croatia be having a blitz? Sweden and its cities to peer nations that it becomes clear just how bad things really are. In the same year that over 60 people died in Sweden from gunshot wounds, the combined total for Norway, Finland and Denmark was just 10. In the capital of Stockholm, the per capita gun murder rate is almost 30 times higher than that of London. As the Economist wrote, summing up the findings in a 2018 study, a man aged 15 to 29 in Sweden is 10 times more likely to get shot than in Germany. Again, if you're watching this... But you see, in Sweden, like, I can bring the blitz. The blitz can be outside. You know, I feel like they can. In London, they can't. But like, Sweden maybe? While sat in a large US city or in certain nations in Latin America, you might now be thinking along lines of 60 gun murders in one year. Please. The difference is that gun on the sides are really... It's funny that you say that, sir. I'm from the city of Chicago. So to me, that does sound like, but I've been doing this for a long time and I know that it's not like for Europe. So loop to that block right there, laying on that table like that. Continuously rare across the whole EU and used to be almost unthinkable in Sweden. In 2003, the nation had one of the world's lowest gun murder rates. As recently as 2012, it could be listed as one of the planet's 10 safest countries. It's now dropped to nearly 30th place. Just before we continue with today's video, I do want to sh... ...begin... ...re-a-nger... ...I... ...wall-a-d-e-n... ...out-j-i-s... ...pl-a-swi... ...eat... ...ice... ...very... ...br-a-swi... ...so don't worry, they're got... ...person-life... ...will never... ...is-cree-trop... ...exrupt of... ...the graphics... ...you could worth falling to a survey... ...across most of the rest of Europe... Oh, yeah! ...council for crime prevention. This video is now back to it. According to a survey done by Sweden's National Council for Crime Prevention, while shooting deaths in their nation have been spiking, across most of the rest of Europe, they've been falling. Clearly, modern-day Sweden is an outlier, both on the European continent and within the... Shit, look, beautiful. Look at this. What's them yellow... ...them trees, the yellow things? ...on decks to its own post-war history. The obvious question, then, is why? Why does Sweden, in 2023, feel like a real-life Scandinavian remake of Escape from New York? One answer is that it's the nation currently awash with guns. Thanks to 3,218 kilometers of coastline that's utterly empty and unguarded for vast stretches, smuggling weapons into Sweden is easy. According to police estimates, Stockholm alone contains over 3,000 illegal guns. As Vice News notes, that's around three times the number thought to be in London, a city with around 10 times the population. The majority of these guns come from the Balkans, where weapons left over from the 1990s conflicts are still readily available. Although they're being brought to Sweden for use by criminals from former Yugoslavia, at least not exclusively, rather these imported guns are being sold to a dizzying array of gangs. The exact number of gang members in Sweden is hard to determine, and estimates vary wildly. Police chief Anders Thornberg has publicly estimated about 13,000, while the government has claimed it's more in the region of 30,000. One reason it's hard to be sure is that many of the gangs are so small, even their members probably wouldn't consider themselves part of an organized crime group. Speaking of ICE, crime reporter Kim Malmgren explained, most of them wouldn't recognize themselves as an organization, but more as a group of friends who grew up together. But while it's hard to class... So a clique. They don't recognize themselves as members, they just a clique. A clique of homies, you know what I'm saying? Moving, making money with each other. The five, the exact number of gangs in Sweden, their effect on society can be seen all too easily. Back in September, a single 12-hour period saw a teenage rapper slaughtered outside a football pitch as children were playing, a grown man shot dead, and a young woman killed in a psalm when her house was destroyed by a bomb erroneously left at the wrong address. All told, September was the worst month for homicide in Sweden in four years, with 2023 already on track to exceed 2022 in the number of shootings and bombings. It was against this dark background that Prime Minister Ulf Kristensen made a rare televised address. In which he told the nervous public that, quote, Sweden has never before seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this. An address in which he also pledged to call in the army to help stop the bloodshed. Whether it will work is not a matter. With police chiefs briefing that this is Sweden's worst security crisis since the Second World War, it seems naive to think that it could be quickly solved. Rather, the current situation is the result of decades of accidents and missteps that are finally added up to a national catastrophe. The Word on the Tracks If you ever need a real-life example of the law of unintended consequences, look no further than what happened in Sweden in 2020. That year, as most of the world was trapped indoors by the pandemic, European police were quietly at work breaking the codes of EncroChat, a communications network favored by organized crime. The result was a wave of arrests across the continent. Thousands of gangsters who talked freely on the surface about smuggling drugs or ordering a hit were thrown behind bars. In Sweden alone, 400 criminals went down, including the heads of multiple gangs. At the time, it felt like a massive win for law enforcement, a killer blow that had chopped the head off countless crime family. Yeah, you would think so. But the thing about that is, when people go to jail, all at once, they talk. They talk. They click up. They grow. So, we'll see how this blade is. It's only in retrospect that breaking EncroChat's codes seems like a dangerous mistake. Speaking to the independent Swedish journalist Darman Sully, who described how, quote, the arrests led to chaos, where very young gang members are now fighting for dominance of the lucrative drugs market. One of the key words in that sentence is young. With the old... Yeah, that was probably a power vacuum. A generation of crime bosses gone, Sweden seems to have become a playground for children acting out their gangster fantasies. The only difference being that these gains have deadly consequences. A 2021 Swedish police report into young gang members found a low threshold for lethal violence, as well as, quote, lack of respect for human life and the indifference to the risk of harmed third parties. You can see all these translates into real world harm just by looking at some of the recent stories to come out of the country. In 2023, a 13-year-old was shot in the head execution style in a stock on suburb. Back in 2020, two teenagers were tortured and raped in a cemetery as a form of punishment. Often, these brutal crimes aren't even committed for money or control of lucrative drugs routes. They're more linked to teenage obsessions, issues of respect or of showing dominance. It didn't used to be like this. While Sweden has always had gangs, they tended to be structured more like traditional cartels, biker gangs, or crime empires linked to the Middle East with stripped hierarchies and bosses controlling everything. This is the model you'll still find in other European countries like Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium. To be clear, it's not a model that we want to romanticize. Belgium is going through its own crisis of gang violence linked to transnational cocaine cartels and anyone who thinks such cartels can't be brutal has, well, obviously never watched Narcos. In the Swedish context, though, the old bosses at least tried to avoid civilian casualties, knowing that it would harm business. The young new... Yeah, casualties always harm business. Once there's an M around, there's more police around. And they're investigating and things that are becoming uncovered that don't want to be uncovered. Upstarts, by contrast, have developed a habit of trying to kill family members of anyone they have beef with. This has led to multiple innocent people being shot or blown up in cases of mistaken identity. A cycle of violence fueled by having so many small gangs competing for finite resources. Police in Stockholm alone have counted 52 such organizations. Police chief and head of intelligence for the greater Stockholm area, J.L. Polderevius, has even gone on record saying the current crisis is more like low-intensity warfare than a crime problem, a perception undoubtedly fueled by the authorities' failings. The Economist reports that only around 20% of Sweden's gang-related murders are ever solved, nor are the police often able to react in real-time. Back in 2020, Gothenburg was parallel- I'm not surprised police are being slow, okay. Eyesed by a gang war so intense, it saw rival organizations setting up roadblocks and ambushers to capture their enemies. Although the police intervened to dismantle the roadblocks, they didn't arrest anyone. The violence only ended when the gangs themselves agreed a truce. If that sounds unbelievable, rest assured that you've not heard the half of it. Cyber a quick dive into one of the major causes driving Sweden's gang wars, the legal roadblocks stopping the government. You know who he remind me of? What kind of sound like? What's the dude from the UK that be doing all the, the ones, like he used to do, he did the King Von documentary, it was like three hours, what was his name again? Oh my God. Of him from doing anything about it. What if I told you for young guns? As we just mentioned, one of the unique features of Sweden's gang problem is that many of those carrying out shootings and bombings are extremely young. Like, not even in the sense of 18 year olds with little life experience, we mean kids between the ages of 13 and 15. Speaking to the Telegraph, Swedish police acknowledged the existence of around 1200 so-called... Man, it's like they model and they gang stuff after Chicago. The current state of gang stuff after Chicago's current state of gang stuff. Child soldiers. The children are also said to make up the majority of those arrested for gang and defences. And this is where things start to get really problematic. In Sweden, the age of criminal responsibility is 15. Anyone who commits a crime below that age cannot be sentenced to any punishment. This contrasts with nations like England which set the criminal responsibility age at 10. But Sweden goes even further. The recent law... It's 10 in the UK? In England? I didn't know that. Order agreed that those under 18 should only be arrested as a last resort, while those under 21 should only be imprisoned in exceptional circumstances. The goal of these legal changes carried out last decade was to improve the rights of offenders and make it easier to rehabilitate young criminals. As an idea, it's definitely laudable. An attempt to remove the lifelong stigma that petty... Okay, where did they get this clip from? She got a full face of makeup, full set of nails. Hair done. ... teenage crimes can carry in places like America or the UK. Sadly, that attempted enlightened policy has now hamstrung the police dealing with vicious teenage gangs. And those remaining gangs still run by older men have been incentivized to recruit kids. As appalling as that last sentence was, there's a cold logic behind it. Consider the case of a 16-year-old hitman who walked into a Stockholm gym last year intending to kill a much older gang member only to shoot dead and innocent bystander. Under Sweden's lenient system, the teenage murderer was sentenced to less than three years in a youth care home. Even other Scandinavian countries disagree with this approach. When Swedish gang members, all under the age of 18 crossed into Denmark to carry out a hit, the Danish authorities locked them up for 20 years. A center-right MP, Johan Fawcett, pointed out to the Economist, if they'd committed the same murder in Sweden, the maximum penalty would have been four years in a social institution. For gangs, there are other advantages to using... Are you years and two years? I don't even think that's a... I think like you get locked up. If you hear and you do something at 13, you're gone. You're gone to a president, at least until you're 18. You're still getting some... You're still getting seven years that a young offender is a president of some, right? Children, homemade bombs inside thermos flasks look less suspicious when carried by a kid. Such kids are also easier to manipulate. Really, though, it's the justice system's inability to convict young offenders that's driving the trend. As former chief prosecutor Lee Stam complained to the Telegraph, we protect the integrity of criminals and ignore the victims. A statement that's hard to argue with when you realize that, until very recently, Swedish police weren't even allowed to tap criminals' phones. Still, the current problems aren't solely a byproduct of the two that's hard to argue with when you realize that, until very recently, Swedish police weren't even allowed to tap criminals' phones. Oh, man, you was out... Hey, they was out there being able to do whatever they wanted to. I know some of the more established members and organizations are upset that these young kids were ruining it because it's going to get that slowly but surely they're going to tighten up. Still, the current problems aren't solely a byproduct of an extremely lenient legal system. Despite a 75% increase in budget in recent years, Sweden police forces are still comparatively underfunded and undermanned. As recently as 2020, the country could boast only two police officers per thousand residents compared to three in Germany. Within the EU, only Denmark, Finland and Latvia have fewer police officers per capita. Admittedly, these figures are now slightly out of date. Sweden has been on a police hiring spree, not yet visible in Eurostat data, with a goal of adding 6,000 new front-line officers by 2024. But even this increase is below where police chiefs wanted to be. The chief of the Gothenburg... This is a very well done... Police has asked for 10,000 more cops to be added. So, yeah. It's fair to say that the entire legal apparatus in Sweden is facing challenges. Challenges that have helped fuel the escalating crisis. Even so, we still haven't answered our title question. How did things get so bad? Okay, here we go. This is my prediction. To do that, we're gonna have to return our attention to another key ingredient in the nation's combustible mix. An ingredient that many Swedes find too controversial to even talk about. A failed set of immigration policies. Now, the trouble with discussing immigration and crime is that it can effectively sweep away all nuance, reducing what is an extremely complicated topic into just another front in the never-ending culture wars. However, it's also a topic that we need to at least try and broach. According to the economists, some 50% of Sweden's gang members were born abroad. Even those born in Sweden are highly likely to have parents who weren't. 85% of those involved with gangs have what the magazine termed an immigrant background. In most cases, that means Iraqi, Somali, Lebanese, Turkish, Syrian, or Balkan heritage. For some on the right, this is as far as the discussion needs to go, further proof that immigrants are inherently criminal. Yet, to stop here, it would be to ignore the fact that this is unique to Sweden. As the telegraph, hardly a bastion of lefty wokeness has written, yes, the 2015 asylum wave saw Sweden import all kinds of criminality among the record numbers of people it took in. But Germany took in even more and doesn't have such problems. So what then is it about the Swedish immigration system that has led to so many young men with foreign backgrounds turning to organized crime? At least a partial answer comes from the last two prime ministers. According to Sweden's current center-right leader, Ulf Christensen, quote, it is an irresponsible immigration policy and a failed integration that has brought us here. Before Lisbär in 2022, his center-left predecessor, Magdalena Andersson, had meanwhile declared that we now have parallel societies in Sweden. We live in the same country, but in completely different realities. It's in those two quotes that we can begin to get a sense of the true root problem. An absolute failure to ensure peoples of wildly different cultures have any means or incentive to integrate. And the issue is tied up in housing, or perhaps more accurately, housing and a lack of forward planning. For such a small nation, Sweden is stupid. I feel like that's always the reason. Pendlessly diverse. While its population is roughly similar to that of the Czech Republic, the 2021 census found that fewer than 5% of Czech residents were born abroad. In Sweden, that number is more like 20%. While its population is roughly similar to that of the Czech Republic, the 2021 census found that fewer than 5% of Czech residents were born abroad, like this guy. In Sweden, that number is closer to 20%. Much of this has been fueled by Sweden's self-image as a humanitarian superpower, a place not afraid to take in those fleeing conflict or persecution. Trappler Ross, who am I? Trappler Ross, the way he's narrating it. Between 2012 and 2022, the number of foreign-born residents rose by 680,000, in large part driven by refugees. Unfortunately, Sweden's welcome often doesn't extend much beyond opening the door. Swedish crime reporter, Diamond Sala, who himself born in Kosovo, has described how the only housing often available to migrants is in suburbs far from cities where, quote, the schools are poor, there is high unemployment, and many do not speak Swedish. An approach he said makes people outsiders. A typical example of this might be Husby outside Stockholm. 80% of the population of immigrant backgrounds, mostly Iraqi, Somali, Syrian, and Turkish, so deprived is Husby that the government classes it as one of 22 extremely vulnerable areas. But as Salihu has said, poverty isn't the only problem, or even the main one. Rather, it's a combination of factors that leave residents untethered from wider society. Harsh labor laws, for example, mean it can be near impossible for newcomers to find legal work. That's created a gap in unemployment rates between natives and non-natives that's the worst in the developed world. Nearly 15% of immigrants in Sweden are out of work, and there are 4% of the local born population. Teenagers, too, have limited options. Undefunded and underperforming schools mean boys often give up on education. Local youth centres have been often taken over by gangs. Board and lacking direction, teens can wind up joining for the sense of respect and community. None of this is to excuse the violence committed by these young men. The majority of people with immigrant backgrounds in Sweden do not join gangs. They do not murder people despite suffering the same lack of opportunities. To not acknowledge this would do, law-repiding newcomers a disservice. Still, these factors may at least explain why these communities are such fertile ground for gang recruiters. Speaking to the independent Darman Selihu summed up his thoughts on the issue of immigration and gang crime in the country, thusly. Both the conservatives and the social democrats who have governed Sweden for decades have been passive bystanders to an ever-evolving problem of segregation and lack of integration. Maybe it's not the migration, but the lack of planning for a new society that is the culprit. Whatever the truth, the problem exists today is undoubtable. The only question is, can anybody solve it? As we're working on this piece, Sweden receives some unexpected good news. Gang leader Raul Majid, known as the Kurdish fox, was arrested crossing the border from Turkey into Iran. As a resident of Turkey, Majid had spent years directing criminal activity and murders in Sweden from abroad. To say his arrest is a relief is probably something of an understatement. A war between Majid's fox-dropped gang and another has helped fuel 2023's surge in violence. Nonetheless, it's hard to believe, given everything we've outlined in this video, that the arrest of one gang boss will bring Sweden back to stability. No. Of course not. Like I said before, it's gonna be a power struggle. You... It's like Hydra from Marvel. You arrest or take one person out the streets. Two will pop up and those two will war together and it'll split more people in half and become just a snowball effect. To change the nation's trajectory is gonna require much deeper fixes. Thankfully, the real and coalition already has some ideas. The only problem is no one is sure if they're gonna work. One of the basic steps the current government is taking is to try and make the criminal justice system tougher. That means staff-like increased sentences for gang crimes tied to parole conditions and double... Yeah, good luck, man. Even if the... Even if... Even if that happens, Sweden got some of the most nice... They got some of the most nice jails that I've ever come across. They be having whole careers, fireplaces, you know what I'm saying? Toilets with baudets in them. Convenient stores in them. Leaving the minimum penalty for gun crimes. It also means the creation of new youth prisons. As we mentioned earlier, a 16-year-old murderer in Sweden will currently serve less than four years in the youth care home for his crime and with the new bill, 15 to 17-year-olds who commit a serious crime will be sent to something closer to an actual prison with the first ones laid to do open in 2026. While they won't solve the... Oh, I can't wait for the documentary. ...closer to an actual prison with the first ones laid to do open in 2026. While they won't solve the problem of the high age of criminal responsibility, it will at least hopefully create some deterrence. At the same time... Because right now, there's no deterrence. Four years and I'm gonna... Like, that'd be the attitude. Like, somebody make you mad for four years, I'm gonna go take that. I ain't doing that in any way. I don't even like going to school. My parents are already doing them out of here. Watch this. And then on top of that, they're going for four years to somewhere that's probably better than their home situation. The number of prison places for criminals over 18 will be doubled. For victims of teenage gangsters... Go back. ...and their responsibility, it will at least hopefully create some deterrence. At the same time, the number of prison places for criminals over 18 will be doubled. For victims of teenage gangsters, this step will undoubtedly offer comfort. But it's not totally clear whether it's going to work to lower crime rates. Wait, what did you just say? Over 18 will be doubled. For victims of teenage gangsters... For victims of teenage gangsters... This step will undoubtedly offer comfort. If you already a victim, ain't no comfort in the victimization. I'm already a victim. I could be a DEAD victim. How am I comforted? But it's not totally clear whether it's going to work to lower crime rates. Professor in Criminology and Department Head at Stockholm University, Felipe Estrada, did a long interview with his faculty's website where he cautioned that Sweden's narcotics market is so lucrative that gangs will likely have little trouble finding new recruits to replace those imprisoned. He also expressed reservations about another tool police will be given, the power of stop and search. Stop and search is a measure whereby police can create a temporary zone inside of which anyone can be searched without the officers needing to prove they suspect them of a crime. Bro, it's crazy that Sweden has none of this. Sweden was so nice at one point, they didn't need no rules. Oh, stop and search is already a thing? Crime. Such powers are already used widely in England and Wales where they're extremely controversial because of the disproportionate way that they target minorities. A practice which some argue increases friction between officers and the communities that they serve. Still, these powers can also lead to the discovery of weapons or serious drugs, thereby hopefully discouraging criminals from carrying either. The final major new tool Sweden is considering is something known locally as sluta skujut, which translates to stop shooting. However, American audiences are more likely to know by the name Group Violence Intervention. An American idea. First and foremost, salute to the crib, this lakeshore drive right here. I don't know what time of day you around here getting this footage. I don't know why it's empty, but continue. Pioneered in inner-city, likely to know by the name Group Violence Intervention. An American idea. Pioneered in inner-city neighborhoods in places like Chicago and Boston, GVI subjects known gang members to mandatory call-ins. At these sessions, they are confronted by victims of gang crime and then offered pathways out. If they don't take the exit ramp, they're warned that the police will crack down on them remorselessly. In neighborhoods in Boston and Chicago, GVI led to drops in youth homicide of up to between 37 and 63%, nor is it an idea completely alien to Swedish culture. Things got so bad in the city of Malmo that a pilot program was launched in 2018 and later integrated into regular police work. The results seem to speak for themselves. In 2018, Malmo suffered 12 fatal shootings. By 2020, it was reduced to just three. Although it spiked back up to five in 2022, that was still fewer than in 2018 or 2019. According to Radio Sweden, under the program, quote, the number of shootings and explosions in Malmo has gone down by 40 to 60%. However, there was one major caveat. According to the National Council for Crime Prevention, it's not certain GVI was solely responsible for this dipping crime. It could be that other factors were at play. Still, these new programs and police powers, a mixture of progressive and conservative approaches, may be the best chance Sweden has. If anybody wants me to react to anything in the chat, please send a link. Don't tell me a name of something. It's in the link. At reducing its stratospheric gang crime rate, we can only pray that they work out. At the end of this video then, it's hopefully clear that Sweden's is an extremely complex place. A place where good intentions and a culture of tolerance have accidentally given rise to a spate of bombings and shootings that leave people feeling unsafe even in their own homes. To be clear, we're not saying the country is some sort of crime-ridden hellhole. The overall crime rate remains about the European average. The US government's Sweden travel advisory notice doesn't even mention gang crime instead focusing on the threat of terrorism inspired by a recent spate of Koran burnings. If you fly to Stockholm tomorrow, your experience will almost certainly be common enjoyable. Nonetheless, within the context of its own post-war history, the fact remains that Sweden is experiencing a level of gang violence is never seen before, a criminal wave that has left ordinary citizens feeling helpless. Well, my advice is, if it's so miniscule and small at this moment, I hope you all take the right steps to nip it in the bud. Because one wrong step and you're gonna be looking like, you're gonna be looking like Chicago in a minute. See, I love you, but like, comment, subscribe, turn on your post. Don't go on, man. Appreciate that. Appreciate the bits.