SUNDBYBERG/STOCKHOLM The handsome Ursvik Bridge is quiet. The reason can be found years ago.
It was completed in 2017, but has not yet been put into use. On the website of the Stockholm regional administration, it is reported that the bridge is awaiting the completion of the light rail line. The commissioning year is 2022.
Now pedestrians and cyclists move occasionally on the bridge, but the passage of cars is blocked by a concrete barrier. The bus lanes shine as if freshly painted.
At the bridge, the border of the two municipalities passes. Stora Ursvik belongs to Sundbyberg municipality, Rinkeby Stockholm.
Rinkeby is a district where 90 percent of the residents have some kind of immigrant background. Most of the houses are rental apartments. In Stora Ursvikis, the last new buildings should be completed in 2026, and then there will be both rental and owner-occupied apartments in the area.
The Swedish parliamentary elections will be held on Sunday, and the Ursvik bridge has become like a symbol of how the attitude towards people of foreign background has changed in Sweden in just ten years.
The Swedish Democrats of the municipality of Sundbyberg have proposed that the bridge be demolished. It is exactly that proposal that all the other parties are still against.
Instead, the local coalition members demand camera surveillance on the bridge and, if necessary, barriers to block traffic. In this way, the coalition wants to ensure that the bridge does not increase insecurity and that gang violence does not affect the residents of Ursvik.
Was on my way to the hardware store Jan-Erik Öberg thinks the whole bridge thing is absurd. He has just cycled along another light traffic bridge from Rinkeby to Ursvik.
No bad influences have been suspected of coming along that bridge, and it is not required to destroy it.
Öberg himself lives in the park-like district of Bromma and recognizes the costs of thought.
– I think it is based on fear. In wealthy areas, there is a fear that the prices of houses or apartments will collapse. There is not necessarily any reason for fear, but it sits deep, Öberg thinks.
Some of Ursvik’s blocks are still under construction, but the finished part of the area feels like walking through an advertisement for a construction store. The new houses resemble Legos, and there are no people to be seen anywhere.
Or so it seems. There is movement on one street corner. Many seem to be on the same page. You can pick up purchases ordered from the online store at Kadunkulma’s grocery store.
Marika Ågren finds a closed bridge strange.
– Why build a bridge if you are not going to use it? Weird.
Ågren plans to vote, but considers this election campaign to be sloppy.
– All parties just want to push to the front row.
Tony Lopez has only lived in Ursvik for a year. His perception is based only on hearsay, but maybe he is just fine that the bridge is not in use.
– According to what I heard, it’s a bit restless on the other side.
Rinkeby middle school it is not allowed to photograph students in the yard, as there are young people with protected identities. Protection has been decided upon, for example, as a result of domestic violence, a culture of honor or crime.
Principal To Martin Malmberg the news of gang clashes and shootings is not entirely new.
He tells how, for example, this spring one of the students was slipping into gangs. In the case of the young person, just changing schools was not enough, but this also completely moved out of Stockholm County to a safer environment.
– Unfortunately, gangs recruit young people in Rinkeby, Malmberg says.
The news also from the last few weeks spoke volumes, that the recruitment of schoolchildren seems to be successful. A 15-year-old shot dead a gang leader in a shopping center in Malmö. A bomb was found in Kungsträdgården, the core of Stockholm, and according to current information, the police brought three 15-year-olds to the scene. The perpetrators had come to the center with a bomb bag on a local train.
Principal Malmberg says that over the years he has concluded from the news that there are also former students of Rinkeby school in criminal gangs. It would seem that the common thing is that the young people who ended up in gangs have not received a primary school leaving certificate. Then the doors to high school won’t open and young people will be left with nothing.
Now 70 percent of the school’s ninth graders get a certificate and can continue to high school. A few years ago, only one in two made it to the next stage.
That’s why, in Rector Malmberg’s opinion, there is already something desperate in the speeches of the parties demanding increasingly harsher punishments in the election campaign. Malmberg would rather start with supporting schools, social services and parents, so that going to elementary school goes smoothly, and the gangs’ promises of big money don’t attract them.
Attempts have been made to curb crime already for years with strictures.
The Social Democrats, who held the position of prime minister for eight years, write in their election program that they have already tightened 70 laws related to crime and more are on the way. Last week, the Democrats promised 10,000 more police officers in ten years. There are now just under 22,000 police officers in Sweden.
A practical example of harsher sentences is from Thursday, when an 18-year-old man from Malmö received a life sentence for killing two of his teachers. Previously, his punishment would have been shorter due to the so-called youth discount. Leniency for young offenders was removed at the beginning of the year. According to Swedish radio, Malmöläinen is the youngest ever sentenced to life.
In the Kumla prison in central Sweden there are more than 500 prisoners. They all have sentences of more than four years, often for violent and drug crimes. There are also people here who have been sentenced for the number one issue of the Swedish elections, i.e. gang and street violence.
He runs the prison Jacques Mwepu, who has more than 20 years of experience in Swedish prison care. The atmosphere inside the walls has changed, he says.
– Attitudes among the prisoners have hardened, as has the attitude towards the guards.
Part of the tightness can be caused by tightness. Kumla now has more prisoners than places. There are 62 new prisons under construction.
Part of the change in the atmosphere in the prison is due to the changed attitudes of the prisoners, which Mwepu describes with the words: violence brings power.
According to Mwepu, disciplinary opportunities in prisons have already been increased. A maximum of 180 more prison days can be added to anyone who disturbs other prisoners or refuses to participate in anything, such as work. Visits can be restricted and the prison can be changed, which according to Mwepu is particularly unpleasant for the prisoners.
Mwepu does not want to start assessing whether there are relatively more foreigners with a long sentence. The Swedish Crime Prevention Agency Brå has not clarified the matter in these terms either. Instead, according to Brå, the particularly risky group seems to be young men from troubled suburbs.
That is, like for example in Rinkeby.
Increasing penalties has become like an auction in this election. The Sweden Democrats take the steepest line, and the Left Party takes the mildest line. Others settle in between.
The Sweden Democrats would, among other things, change the name of prison care to a penal institution, and would also deport criminals who have received Swedish citizenship.
According to Mwepu, the director of Kumla, the punishments must be felt, but simply tightening the punishments will not eliminate crime. He reminds us of countries where the death penalty is in force, but crime has not disappeared despite that.
In Mwepu’s opinion, in addition to punishments, attention should be directed to the neighborhoods where gangs are involved.
– Pay attention to the housing policy, how people live in the suburbs, how much support the school gets, and what about families. I think a lot can be done there.
The only thing that Mwepu, as a civil servant, takes a stand on is the name change proposed by the Sweden Democrats: he believes that the penitentiary no longer meets the main principles of Swedish prison management.
Having once escaped from the Congo and came to Sweden as an asylum seeker, he says he knows what it means to trample on human rights.
We tried to get the young people from Rinkeby to talk to the youth facilities and the Future House, which is intended for older, 16-19 year olds. The person in charge of the youth facilities got a negative answer, and there was no answer at all from the House of the Future.
Many of the people of Rinkeby say that they are tired of the cameras and the constant negative publicity.
In Rinkeby market, most parties have their own election booths.
Municipal politician of the right-wing liberals By Johan Bergel tells his own view on the tightness of youth facilities. In the past years, he had become a breeding ground for the wrong kind of crowd and drugs, and the places were closed. Now he especially praises Tulevaisuustu house, where the focus is on the various projects of young people, not on hanging out.
Segregation is another word used heavily during the election campaign. Now it is admitted that the residential areas are too segregated. Minister of Integration and Immigration of the Social Democrats Anders Ygeman suggested that the residential areas should be at most half non-Swedish. Others shot the idea down as impossible.
As a result of segregation, the students’ Swedish language may be weak already when they enter school and it will not develop at all if none of the classmates speak Swedish as their mother tongue.
The new chairman of the Liberals, i.e. the former People’s Party Johan Persson proposed language tests for 2-year-olds. There was no support for the initiative.
The same happened to the moderate coalition’s idea that 5-year-old children in particularly demanding areas, such as Rinkeby, should be tested for ADHD, an activity and attention disorder, because according to them, there is an overrepresentation of people suffering from a neuropsychiatric disorder in prisons.
Such a debate will take place in the Swedish parliamentary elections in 2022.
Investigative reporter for SVT Diamant Salihu considers one of the causes of the problems to be the fact that in the early 2000s, many official services were discontinued in Rinkeby and many similar neighborhoods. According to Salihu, society seemed to withdraw from Rinkeby.
Rinkeby’s new police building was completed in 2020. Now policemen and security guards can be seen on the market even on a normal weekday evening.
The parties’ election programs admit that Sweden has failed to integrate immigrants, especially after the 2015 refugee crisis. Now the left-wing parties, which previously had a positive attitude towards immigration, connect immigration and crime.
For example, the social democrats want to limit work-based immigration, because the unemployed in Sweden must be employed first. Prime minister Magdalena Andersson the party also wants to introduce needs assessment. According to the Democrats, the access of highly educated people to Sweden must be ensured.
It was Rinkeby’s and Ursvik’s whatever the fate of the bridge between, violence and gangs can spread to Ursvik through other channels.
American background Ted Soost From Ursvik, the opening of the bridge is considered essential, because Ursvik can now be reached by only one bus.
– Fears can be justified, but they can be overcome. Local politicians and the police must work hard to prevent crime from spreading.
Soost reminds us that Ursvik is not a paradise either. For example, there is still no youth facility in the area, not even though it has been demanded for years.
Read more about the topic:
Sweden became the center of murders and grenade attacks, and Finland should avoid these mistakes – Swedish expert: “We were naive”
Sweden’s prime ministerial candidates faced off in a duel, immigration and crime heated up the debate