Sweden
Sweden regularly reports hate crime data to ODIHR. Sweden’s criminal law contains a general penalty-enhancement provision. Sweden includes defamation, hate speech and discrimination crimes in its data. Hate crime data are collected by the National Council for Crime Prevention and are based on information from the police and the prosecution authority. Since 2012, the number of hate crime cases is estimated based on a statistical sample of police reports. Hate crime reports are published annually. Three different victimization surveys, used to measure unreported hate crime, are conducted regularly at one, two and three-year intervals, respectively.
How hate crime data is collected
When a crime is reported to the authorities, the police officer or civil clerk who speaks to the person reporting the crime must highlight a possible hate crime by answering a mandatory field (a tick box) in the electronic report system (RAR). The police can also specify the circumstances indicating the hate crime motive in the narrative of the report. The practice varies between different police regions in Sweden, with some regions encouraging officers to provide details in the narrative report; others attach a document with information or leave comments in the reporting system.
The police training programme on hate crime instructs the recording officers to, when appropriate, write a narrative report that details why the case might be a hate crime in the relevant section of the form. A guideline is also available for all police staff, both on the intranet and in a specific app on police mobile phones. During 2017, the police changed their reporting system from RAR to DurTvå (where the investigation is documented) and the new system includes a pop-up window that provides the definition of a hate crime when the officer comes to that question.
Registered bias motivations are those included in Swedish law: race, skin colour, national or ethnic background, faith and sexual orientation or transgender identity or expression. Any crime can be registered as a hate crime. The Swedish police are obligated to write a report on everything that’s reported, whether it is possible to investigate the case or not. This means that it is not possible to distinguish crimes from incidents.
The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention compiles national statistics on hate crime by using specific keyword searches in their database. These numbers are not based on the cases highlighted by police as hate crimes.
The prosecutors and police systems are separate, which means that the box that the police tick to highlight potential hate crimes does not follow when a case is transferred. The prosecutorial authorities are, however, able to highlight hate crime cases themselves in their systems. Prosecutors have extensive guidelines on how to identify and prosecute hate crimes, published in 2016. The Courts are not obliged to specify, either in text or in the list of which sections of the law that has been considered in the verdict, whether the penalty enhancement paragraph has been considered.
Official Data
National developments
Hate crime provisions in the Criminal Code have been amended to include transgender identity among the protected characteristics.
The Swedish Police produced several hate crime awareness-raising films and ran chat forums on social media. The Police also formed an internal mentorship network, whereby regional police forces with experienced hate crime specialists act as mentors for those regions that do not have hate crime specialization but aspire to increase their capacity to address hate crimes.
The Swedish Police and Prosecution Service organized national hate crime conferences, aimed at improving practitioners’ awareness and ability to respond to hate crimes.
The Swedish Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority continued to sponsor several civil society organizations, providing support to victims of hate crime through its Crime Victim Fund.
International reports
No information is available.
Key observation
ODIHR observes that Sweden has not reported information on the sentencing of hate crime cases to ODIHR.
