Malmö,

Sweden

Safe City Action

 

Malmö and Nordic Safe Cities are investigating several possible actions together in 2020. These include the possibility of strengthening the communication between and with the public. Hereunder, examining new ways of dealing with the online hatred expressed on social media and how to further improve relations between the police and the citizens.

City Portrait

Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden, located at the far south of the country, and with 330.000 inhabitants. The city was founded under Danish rule in the late 1200s and became part of Sweden in 1658. Malmö is full of contrasts with Scandinavia’s highest building, the Turning Torso, looking down on 16th century architecture. Geographically the city is small and compact without any suburbs. Malmö is truly a multi-ethnic and multicultural city, home to a population with roots in around 180 different countries. This diversity is seen as a positive development, and Malmö is excited to house representatives from all the world’s nations. The vast diversity, however, also includes divides in several socio-economic aspects.

Safe City Challenges

The city of Malmö focuses on tackling socio-economic disparities and social injustices – real and perceived – as these have shown to fuel “us and them” narratives, create prejudices, increase polarisation, and have led to spikes in criminal activity, violence and shootings. Societal inequalities additionally put vulnerable groups at greater risk to extremist and other harmful influences, hate and disinformation, off-as well as online. Crime rates have been declining for years in Malmö but despite the positive developments, inhabitants’ perceptions and feelings of safety have stayed almost the same. This might partly be due to challenges communicating these developments publicly, as messages from city officials on (for example) social media are met by narratives of actual violent acts on the streets of Malmö, as well as perceived threats and misinformation. This stands in the way of the city projecting a nuanced description that recognises the real challenges while factually and credibly communicating the declining crime rates.

Strategy

The city of Malmö works on all levels of prevention (universal, selective/group, indicative level) simultaneously. Depending on the prevention level and particular challenge, Malmö works frequently and closely with civil society as well as law enforcement. The police are an important partner in the municipality’s efforts to safeguard democracy against violent extremism, while civil society is a close collaborator in the prevention of antisocial behaviour among young people.

Focus Areas

The City of Malmö currently focuses its effort around the following levels:

  1. Universal level – such as improving living conditions for children.
  2. Selective/group level – such as coordination between social services, schools, police, and after-school activity providers (SSPF).
  3. Indicative level – such as group violence intervention (GVI)
  4. Rehabilitation level and individualised treatment

 

Highlighted initiatives

1 / 5 — CTC (Communities That Care)

Aims to improve living conditions for Children in Malmö. Investigates underlying risk/protective factors to “all” problem outcomes (criminality, violence, early school dropout, sexual risky behavior, depression and anxiety, drug abuse).

Good practise