ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses immigration and criminality in Sweden. It presents a broad overview of immigration, immigrants and crime in Europe in general, which serves as an important point of departure for comparing and contrasting the Swedish context. The chapter covers the history of immigration to Sweden along with Sweden’s development of immigration and integration policy, and discusses Sweden’s immigration and integration policy. It provides context on studies of immigrant crime in Sweden. The section that follows provides an overview on immigrant criminality in Sweden based on research that has been done since the 1970s. Finally, the chapter summarizes and offer conclusions on the outlook of immigrant criminality in Sweden. Overall, the research indicates that over-representation in recorded crime has remained stable over time, even if immigration to Sweden has changed in character. The immigrant criminality in Sweden appears to depend mostly on Sweden’s reaction to and reception of immigrants.
