A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/12/05/if-youve-got-it-dont-flaunt-it-in-sweden

by pingou • 2 years ago

52 131 2 years ago

andersco• 2 years ago

So, as in america, again, you're guilty until you prove you're innocent, by either wasting a lot of money on legal costs, or alternatively, letting them steal whatever they took from you...

sad.

lifestyleguru2• 2 years ago

TBH both US and Sweden have comparable high wealth inequality, and very high ratio of mean/median wealth. Their rich want their poor to remain poor.

psd12• 2 years ago

Your first claim appears to be false.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coef...

jdmoreira• 2 years ago

Sweden has much higher wealth inequality than the US. Its higher than Russia even

andrewstuart• 2 years ago

Proceeds of crime law is fine if it is decided in a court with judicial oversight and legal representation.

cge• 2 years ago

It seems this is in between the civil forfeiture as it is applied in some places in the US (police seize mostly cash, immediately, regardless of any documentation the owner might show, and can keep it unless the owner goes to court and successfully argues for it back), and the unexplained wealth orders of the UK, which if I recall correctly involve needing to convince courts to approve the seizure first, involve a chance for documentation, and are primarily used for major properties. With this, it seems police can seize goods immediately, but have to return them unless they can convince the courts otherwise.

But, this is police seizing goods, and seemingly mostly small personal goods. How are people supposed to prove they acquired those lawfully on demand, immediately? While walking somewhere, can you provide documentation for how you acquired for all your clothes (yes, the photo apparently shows clothes being seized)? Your phone? Your laptop? Any jewellery, which might have been inherited?

And, if this is somehow to combat street violence, why is the only concrete example of a seizure given in the article of someone with a watch and cash at an airport? For that matter, if the person was carrying that much cash at an airport, presumably involving an international flight, how were already-present currency controls not applicable? If she declared the cash, that would have involved some documentation; did they seize it anyway? If she didn't declare the cash, surely it could already have been seized?

Or is this simply a matter of seizing possessions and arresting people who aren't read as being in the right class position to be carrying those possessions?

It all seems rather strangely incongruous.

miohtama• 2 years ago

"There is no consensus on the main cause of this surge in violence"

If I am not misunderstood, the consensus in Sweden and globally is that the situation is caused by lax immigration policies and taking in too many immigrants who have not been able to integrate to the society.

mac_iver• 2 years ago

Immigration policy is one factor, but it's too easy to blame everything on a single group in society. While Sweden's immigration debate gets lots of attention abroad, other problems like our corrupt private school system and cocaine use among the wealthy don't make as many headlines.

Wytwwww2• 2 years ago

I'm sure that poor people would love to have some cocaine too if they could afford it.

redeux• 2 years ago

Are you saying that the violence is caused by the immigrants directly or indirectly?

I can’t say for Sweden but in the Texas immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens[1]. There doesn’t seem to be a good source of data for the US as a whole.

1. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-o...

mihaic• 2 years ago

The profile of the average Swedish immigrant is different than the average US one. Many EU countries have counted and have seen immigrants commit disproportionally more crime.

dartos6• 2 years ago

To nitpick a bit.

That article is about _arrests_ not crimes committed.

Undocumented folk are arrested less frequently, but that doesn’t necessarily mean fewer crimes are committed.

It could just as likely be that undocumented folk probably live in areas with fewer police stations. Or that crimes caused by undocumented folk to other undocumented folk go unreported and don’t lead to arrests.

Unfortunately nothing is cut and dry when it comes to crime stats :(

cm2012• 2 years ago

The data suggests that immigrants to America have lower crime rates than Americans but European immigrants have higher crime rates than Europeans. This reflects the relative criminality of all four groups.

dijit6• 2 years ago

It’s… difficult.

I live in Sweden and the issues of lack of integration are eerily similar to those that affect the UK (where I was born and raised 80s-10s); pockets of extremely isolated cultures living in essentially parallel societies.

First, migration is too inclusive and too exclusive of a term. For example it would exclude a second generation individual- and if we are suggesting that religion is an issue, those tend to be more radical than their migrant parents.

It would also include people who already have a job and then move to Sweden.

In the UK, second generation migrants are often more spoiled and act worse than their comparatively entrepreneurial and industrious parents.

Then, to conflate matters even further there’s the issue that these parallel societies typically are poorer than the middle-class areas of the host country; and a correlation between wealth and crime is really strong.

So, it’s too reductive to claim anything relating to migration here. It’s an impossible conversation, and filled with conflicting personas in data and it is therefore difficult to contextualise with statistics.

bjornsing6• 2 years ago

Sweden is the opposite to Texas in many ways. One of them is that here immigrants do commit far more violent crime than natural citizens, on a per-capita basis.

AlexandrB• 2 years ago

In Germany the opposite is true[1]. I don't think it's wise to lump "immigrants" together as a group. The composition of immigrant populations varies a lot between countries (or even cities) and as with any individual criminality depends on factors like socioeconomic background. The specifics of immigration matter.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45419466

Dig1t4• 2 years ago

Saying that all immigrants behave the same across the world is like saying all groups of people are the same.

The failure of Syrian, Afghan, and Iraqi immigrants to integrate into Swedish culture is well documented. They exist almost as a separate society within Sweden now, unlike immigrants in Texas.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/28/sweden-records...

In a national address on Thursday night, the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said it was “a difficult time for Sweden”, blaming “political naivety” and “unsuccessful integration”.

tlakern10• 2 years ago

I think that may be because Texas gets Hispanic immigrants, whereas Europe gets immigrants from Islamic regions that have been disrupted by either the U.S. or Russia (mostly the U.S. though).

There should be an UN resolution that says: "You start a war, you take the immigrants."

tim333• 2 years ago

A lot depends on who the immigrants are. You are obviously going to get more problems if they are say criminals from some war zone as opposed to PhDs coming to teach at the university etc.

permo-w3• 2 years ago

the US is very demographically different to Sweden

rurp2• 2 years ago

Is that based on any evidence? I'm not familiar enough with the situation to know what the causes are, but I am aware of the long long history of scapegoating immigrants for any and all problems, so I'm inherintly a bit skeptical of that assumption.

foxglacier2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, the opposite effect of being afraid to acknowledge crime by immigrants is also present. It looks like the government is unwilling to publish data that would resolve that question but here are some clues from Wikipedia [1]:

"58% of men convicted of rape and attempted rape over the past five years were immigrants born outside of the European Union"

"of 100 suspects of murder and attempted murder using firearms, 90 had one parent born abroad"

"Most of the increase is related to gang violence in vulnerable areas in Sweden which are areas with [...] a large immigrant population"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden

rosmax_133718• 2 years ago

This is the consensus. Not even left-wing parties are currently willing to openly condone mass immigration any more.

dartos6• 2 years ago

I don’t think the 2nd sentence proves the first.

huuhee32• 2 years ago

The problem is not immigration or too many migrants, but rather the fact too many of them lack educational background you need to be successful in modern Western society. Mostly it's young men who arrived as asylum seekers without much education who fail to integrate and get marginalized.

rosmax_133718• 2 years ago

I think that's an unnecessary distinction.

dalke2• 2 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, the decades of economic liberalism and dismantling of social support systems has made a lot of people very worried about their future, and as usual the rich and powerful blame immigrants (or some other weak minority group) as a slight-of-hand to distract from the actual issues.

permo-w3• 2 years ago

the two things are both true. mass immigration is causing problems and elites are using as a distraction to push through right-wing economic reforms

rurp2• 2 years ago

I'm not a fan of this law and expect it will end up being abused as much as civil forfeiture in the US. That said, it is interesting to see a stop and frisk law that actually targets wealthy people for once.

foxglacier2• 2 years ago

It targets poor people with expensive items. Wealthy people can explain how they could afford them.

bjornsing6• 2 years ago

But explanations come after the stop and frisk though…

GauntletWizard• 2 years ago

Doesn't Target wealthy people. It targets unexplained wealth. Actually wealthy people will be able to show a bank account statement or say "My father is X" or whatever and get out of it. It is targeting thieves who are running around with stolen goods, but it will actually affect people who have conscientiously saved and flaunt their few pieces of a hard-earned luxury.

bjornsing6• 2 years ago

We’re already starting to see some weird consequences of a closely related law change that allows the authorities to immediately seize assets from people with unpaid debts. For example, there was a news report recently of a woman who lent her car to a friend who was in debt. He was stopped by the police and the car was seized. She complained and could prove she was the legal owner of the car. But that didn’t matter. The authorities sold her car anyway and gave the money to the guy’s lenders. Now they’re saying this was not a mistake and you should be very careful who you lend your car to.

buzer• 2 years ago

How far does that go to? If you rent a car and get stopped by police does that allow police to seize and sell the car? What if you are driving company car? Company plane?

gruez• 2 years ago

Source? This seems absurd on its face

chrismcb• 2 years ago

I can't read the article. But it doesn't seem to be targeting wealthy people. Because if you are known to be wealthy, then your luxury items can be explained.

danielfoster2• 2 years ago

It sounds like this law will be used to target drug gangs and organized crime. Regardless, I don’t see how it can be applied without discriminating against minorities. I highly doubt the woman at the airport, who the article states was stopped for having expensive jewelry, was white and Swedish.

If the police stopped you on the street and asked how you were able to afford a MacBook or XYZ, would you be able to “prove” it?

This law is extremely asinine.

knallfrosch4• 2 years ago

If the police stopped you on the street and asked how you were able to afford a MacBook or XYZ, would you be able to “prove” it?

Yes, because I have a legal occupation.

danielfoster2• 2 years ago

Do you carry your payment slips with you? What if the item in question is deemed too expensive for your role?

Yes, you could probably pull up your work email or show the bank deposits, but my point is that this is an arbitrary standard that cannot be consistently enforced.

rdtsc• 2 years ago

The Oresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden, which opened in 2000, made illegal firearms and drugs easier to transfer.
Ten years ago Sweden, with 10m people, had one of the lowest rates of gun violence and murder in Europe. It now has one of the highest

Is Denmark known for illegal firearms and drugs export? The way it's written it's almost blaming Denmark for its issues. And besides, wasn't that 20 years ago. Surely the illegal firearms and crime would have flooded right in, starting in 2000 until 2010. What happened 10 years ago that started this crime wave?

law came into force allowing them to detain people flaunting ostentatious luxury goods

There is also no way this law won't be abused. Everyone is looking at US cops robbing people in plain daylight of cash and are horrified. Except, other countries' government officials which are getting very excited by such prospects, it seems: "We too, can rob people!"

bjornsing6• 2 years ago

I live in Malmö, on the Swedish side of that bridge. The police quite regularly stops local youths on their way to Denmark with guns and grenades. The Danish minister of justice recently referred to them as “Swedish child soldiers” and threatened to close the border.

So yes, most Danes would probably object to that characterization.

dijit6• 2 years ago

Also living in Malmö, and the Oresund bridge does share some “blame”, but only because its an actual open border to the schengen area.

From what I’m told, people ride trains through europe with weaponry from eastern europe, where black market arms are easier to acquire, through a combination of leaky borders and post-war redundant stock.

jaco6• 2 years ago

It would be easier to simply deport immigrants, most of whom are committing fraud by claiming asylum under false pretenses.

dartos6• 2 years ago

What exactly do you mean by “easier?”

What steps would need to be taken for mass deportation?

Dig1t4• 2 years ago

The impulse behind it is a sense of helplessness over a long-term rise in violent crime. Ten years ago Sweden, with 10m people, had one of the lowest rates of gun violence and murder in Europe. It now has one of the highest, averaging a shooting a day. In 2022, 62 people were shot dead; last year it was 53.

Sweden has super strict gun control laws. This is a pretty good case for the argument that the low levels of gun violence that Europe used to enjoy were more due to cultural values instead of strict laws.

bookofjoe• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/L9Pxa

monkeycantype• 2 years ago

In Australia, and I expect most western countries, it’s pointless discussing immigration without acknowledging it is being used as a lever by business to suppress wages and working conditions in the destination country, and that to do so immigrants are arriving under legal conditions that limit their ability to negotiate fair treatment and mean they live without political representation.

The deteriorating social conditions observed are not a consequence of there being more foreigners, but of deliberate policy decisions to make it more difficult for immigrants in some visa categories to prosper and fully participate in society, a deliberate decision to extract max value from people for minimum reward

seanmcdirmid• 2 years ago

A lot of immigrants come as refugees from war torn countries, they already have problems, and their new country might not provide resources to help them deal with those problems well, especially the kids. They’ll be fine in one or two generations, but right now is trying for them and their new countries, and there is definitely blow back from that.

I’m not sure the economic lever really exists, but then again it might just be where I live since those immigrants are usually making lots of money as techies while the refugees aren’t really seen as sources of cheap labor (although the adults invariably get entry-level jobs while teenagers need help to integrate, work not being an option by the standards of the areas they settle in).

tommiegannert• 2 years ago

What in the actual F is going on. I sincerely hope my cursory reading of the law was wrong. This law[1] seems pretty much to be a presumed-guilty-until-you've-proven-yourself-innocent thing.

Seems they've entered some kind of reverse Minority Report middle ground, where they don't have to prove you committed a crime. If there is reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed for you to own that Rolex, it's gone. Possibly that means "you couldn't prove it was acquired legally."

There goes any chance of me returning to Sweden, I guess. This is going downhill fast.

[1] (Swedish) https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...

Y_Y• 2 years ago

I think discussing people from wearing Rolexes is a social good.

A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

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