"Polarization of violence among teenage boys in Stockholm? A description based on self-declared and registered violent crime, 2002–2020" is written by Fredrik Sivertsson, scholar at the Department of Criminology. The results of the report show, among other things, that a large majority and growing group fo the adolecent boys do not commit any violent crimes, or commit a few minor crimes, while a small group commits the majority of crimes.

Congratulations on the publication of your study! How does it feel?
Thanks, it feels good even if it took a little longer than I thought. But I think it turned out well, the study answers some important questions that are relevant in these times. It should be said that this is a report that has not been peer reviewed. The plan is to eventually build on these results and do a slightly more developed study that should be able to be published in an international journal.

Can you briefly tell us what the study is about and why you chose to do it?
The report is descriptive and aims to provide a nuanced picture of the general development of violence among teenage boys in Stockholm during the first two decades of the 21st century. The development of violence is not infrequently reduced to a matter of rise or fall and I do not think that such simplifications make much sense because it is so dependent on what we are talking about in terms of type of violence, geographic areas and demographic background factors.

As an illustrative example, the last decade has been marked by a clear rise in fatal firearm violence among young men in the suburbs of Sweden's three major cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. This is a specific delineation regarding both type of violence, demographics, geography and time period and there is no doubt that this is the case. But this particular violence at the same time constitutes a very small percentage of the total violence and an interesting question that can be said to be paramount in the report is whether this development reflects a general increase in violence among young men.

Historically, assault violence and fatal violence in Sweden have followed parallel development trends, and an important contributing explanation for this pattern has been the level of alcohol consumption in the country. However, several previously conducted studies point out that this is no longer the case as indicators regarding general use of violence (for example, people prosecuted for assault and self-reported use of violence among school youth) and exposure to violence (for example, people treated for violent injuries according to the National Board of Health and Welfare's inpatient care statistics) show a decrease trends. The reduction is also particularly clear among young men, which thus runs counter to the development of firearm violence.

Similar to these studies, this report uses self-reported and registered violent crime (in the form of suspicions and prosecutions), but an important difference is that it also refers to the same population of school youth aged 15–18 living in Stockholm during the years 2002–2020 and that the development is broken down into several specific violent crimes such as assault, robbery and carrying a knife. Another important aspect of the report is that it recognizes that crime is highly skewed, in short it can be said that this means that a small group of individuals in a given age group account for a majority of all crimes committed in this age group. The report examines how this pattern has developed among teenage boys in Stockholm, and where a starting hypothesis has been that the skewed distribution of violence has increased over time, that is to say that a smaller and smaller group of teenage boys has come to be responsible for an increasing proportion of all violent crimes.

How did you proceed studying this?
In the report, I use both self-declared and registered use of violence. Self-reported data comes from a questionnaire survey among school youth in Stockholm municipality, the so-called Stockholmsenkäten, which was conducted every two years between 2002 and 2020. This data has been provided by the City of Stockholm, which has also helped finance the report. Register data has been provided by a project conducted at the Department of Criminology, Stockholm University. This data applies to the entire population registered with regard to suspicions and prosecutions, and thus I have been able to make a delimitation in the register data extraction that applies to the same population of origin as the Stockholm survey. These sources have their strengths and weaknesses and the idea of ​​the design is that they should complement each other in the description of the development. In an in-depth part of the Stockholm survey, I also investigate whether later generations of teenage boys who self-declare violent crimes constitute a more pronounced risk group than previous generations with regard to a number of typical risk factors for crime concerning, among other things, the residential area, parents, school, peers, health, alcohol consumption and risk-seeking behavior.

What can you say about your results?
The results point to a general decline in the proportion of teenage boys who commit violent crimes during the studied time period, this applies to both self-reported use of violence and registered suspicions and prosecutions and for all studied crime types. However, the frequency of violence, i.e. the number of violent crimes among teenage boys who self-declare or are registered for violence, has not decreased to the same extent. According to these sources, a teenage boy who was born in the early 2000s and who self-declared or alternatively was registered for violent crimes commits almost as many violent crimes as the previous generations of boys committed when they were teenagers. This means that, over time, a smaller and smaller proportion of teenage boys have come to account for an increasingly larger proportion of the total violence in this age category. It can be said that the use of violence has become increasingly concentrated. Thus, I also expect that the in-depth analysis of the Stockholm survey, where I examine the development of risk factors, would show that teenage boys who self-declare violent crimes have come to form an increasingly distinct group of at-risk youth. But that was not the case. generations of adolescent boys had a higher accumulation of risk factors than later and this was earlier generations whether they had self-reported violent offending or not. Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity to do a similar analysis regarding the small group of teenage boys prosecuted for violent crimes. This group may not show the same reduction in risk factors and this is an issue that is important to pursue.

Where or how can studying be beneficial?
As said, the report is of a descriptive nature and cannot give any indication of preventive measures or the like. But it can, on the other hand, provide a basis that contributes to nuance the image of youth violence in Sweden and the perception that we are dealing with a generation of young people on the slide. In short, the report points out that the increase in serious gun violence is not an indicator of general youth violence. Here there are two disparate developments to explain, firstly why a small group of young men have started particularly serious violent crime and secondly why fewer and fewer teenage boys and young men commit violent crimes overall.

Facts: About the report
The report was made within the framework of the agreement on enhanced cooperation between the city of Stockholm and Stockholm University. Julia Sandahl has been Sivertsson's contact from the city of Stockholm and she has also contributed to reading through and providing valuable comments on drafts at various stages of the report work. Valuable comments have also been received from Anders Nilsson, Felipe Estrada and Olof Bäckman, all professors at the Department of Criminology, Stockholm University. It should also be mentioned that the register data comes from a project led by Olof Bäckman.

Through this link you can read the report (text in swedish).