There is a large over-representation of immigrants, particularly from the Middle East and North Africa, among the suspects of sex crimes in Sweden

Over-representation of immigrants has been even higher when it comes to group rapes, especially with three or more assailants. According to an official study from 1996, immigrant males were 4.5 times as likely as Swedes to commit rape. Immigrants from Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia were particularly over-represented, being more than 20 times as likely to commit the same crime. In total, 53% of rape suspects were either first or second generation immigrants. A similar study, conducted in 2005, showed an even higher over-representation of immigrants among sex crime suspects, by then up to 5.1 times as likely as Swedes to commit rape. In the 2005 study, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention explained the growing over-representation with reference to demographics and immigration: “[T]he number of people in Sweden belonging to the group of refugees, which have in earlier studies been shown to have an especially high propensity to commit crime, has increased.” It is a plausible hypothesis that the same mechanism is at work now. During the recent migration crisis, Sweden took in more refugees per capita than any other country in Europe. However, the exact link between sex crimes and immigration is not known, since the Swedish government will not update its statistics, and the data, which are still being collected, have not been made available to the public. In a recent interview, the Minister of Justice, Morgan Johansson, said that the facts are available in the 2005 study, and that no update is necessary. But since 2005, Sweden has absorbed a large influx of refugees from the over-represented regions in North Africa and the Middle East. If over-representation has not changed dramatically since this last survey, it is reasonable to infer that immigration has contributed to the increase in reported sex crime.