As I will show below gun violence appears to be at least as concentrated in Sweden as it is in New Orleans. More generally there are however some notable differences between the US and Sweden. Most importantly, gun violence is much rarer in Sweden. In our study on near repeat patterns for shootings we identify 948 shootings over 5 years across the three biggest Swedish cities (938 of which we could geocode), and in the case of Stockholm this includes the whole county with over 2 million residents. Our study areas in total cover about 3 million residents, meaning the gun violence rate is around 6 incidents per 100 000 population and year. This includes all confirmed firearm discharges reported to the police - not just incidents where someone actually was hit by a bullet. Counting shootings with a casualty drops the number to 378, about 2.5 shootings per 100 000 residents and year. This can be compared with the 462 shootings reported by Jeff Asher for 2016 alone in New Orleans.
In the city of Malmö 2011-2015 there were a total of 289 shooting incidents, of which 136 involved someone injured or killed. 44% of the 289 incidents took place in 11 neighborhoods comprising 16% of the population or 4% of the municipal area. And 46% of incidents with a casualty take place in 10 neighborhoods comprising 15% of population or 4% of the area. This can be compared with the 16.7% of populated land accounting for 54% of shootings in New Orleans as reported by Jeff Asher. The map below includes land not populated, but as can be clearly seen in the map below (click to see a bigger version) the shootings are also very concentrated within these neighborhoods. Actual concentrations would be much higher if using a smaller level of aggregation - for instance as shown below regarding the Stockholm and Gothenburg examples.
Shootings with casualty in Malmö municipality, 2011-2015 |
In Stockholm the pattern of concentration appear to be similar. The map below shows that 12 areas of the city with at least two gun violence casualties are recorded for 33 out of 70 shooting incidents with injury or death. Notably however the rate is much lower in Stockholm than in Malmö, with a total of 197 shootings, 70 of which with a casualty, and almost 3 times bigger population. In addition the areas with high concentration of shootings are much more spread out than in Malmö. The proximity of disadvantaged neighborhoods with criminal networks in Malmö has previously been suggested to be one of the factors that may help explain the high rate of gang violence in the city.
Shootings in Stockholm municipality, 2011-2015 |
Shootings in Gothenburg municipality, 2011-2015. |