The explosion against a restaurant near Nytorget on Södermalm on the night of Tuesday is yet another in a series of acts of violence that have taken place in the Stockholm area since Christmas Eve.
Since then, there have been eight explosions, four murders and five shootings in the 08 area.
Now many are asking the question whether 2023 will be another year dominated by brutal violence, that which springs from the gang criminal environment but which risks affecting a passer-by or a family with children who happen to share a front door with a lifelong criminal.
“These environments will not disappear”
The criminologist and researcher Sven Granath believes that it is too early to say whether 2023 will be even worse than the dark night of 2022 when 388 shootings and 90 explosions took place in Sweden.
– These environments don’t just disappear from one calendar year to another. This level will continue, but then it is difficult to see what it will look like in the second half of the year, he says.
The grim trend also includes that the perpetrators of violence are creeping down in age. Police officers in vulnerable areas are raising the alarm that people in the younger teens are now to a high degree involved in serious criminal acts. In the long run, trust in society also risks being seriously threatened as the crime increases in strength and scope – at the same time as the solutions to the problems are complicated.
– These crimes are difficult to solve, above all there is often a lack of sufficient evidence to arrest and prosecute the instigator, says Sven Granath.
In the player above: See the entire interview with Sven Granath, who explains, among other things, the motives behind the explosions and how worried you should be about being exposed to acts of violence yourself.