Non-Western immigrants and their descendants are vastly overrepresented in Danish crime statistics.

Citing numbers from the Ministry of Justice, Berlingske highlighted that non-Western immigrants, who make up 8.4 percent of Denmark’s population, commit 14 percent of the country’s crimes of aggravated violence and 24.3 percent of the rapes, judging by the number of those convicted, writes the The European Conservative news site.

Figures on second-generation non-Western immigrants are perhaps even more disconcerting. Making up a mere 2.2 percent the population, this demographic is responsible for 15.6 percent of the violent crimes and 8.1 percent of the rapes.

Put together, this means that perpetrators of 29.6 percent of the country’s violent crimes and 32.4 percent of rapes are from a non-Western background, despite only making up 10.6 percent of the population.

„These are deeply disturbing numbers. Therefore, we must take strong and decisive action against this behavior, which is completely unacceptable,” Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told the Berlingske news site.

„It makes me indescribably angry that individuals we have invited into our country repay us by committing rape and severe violence, which destroys other people’s lives here in Denmark,”

– the minister stated.

Researcher Lars Hojsgaard Andersen with the Rockwool Foundation, who specializes in studying crime and minorities, says economic and social conditions are to blame.

The young men who flee to Denmark have limited resources, are traumatized, and have a hard time entering the job market – which he says needs to be taken into consideration when comparing them with ethnic Danes.

According to Mr. Andersen, “in societal terms, there’s a challenge in that we have crime that increasingly has an ethnic face.” Culture, tradition, and the way children are raised also contribute to the discrepancy in criminality between different ethnic groups, he said.

Actually, we don’t know what the concrete explanation is. Nevertheless, it’s striking that it is almost always people from Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa as well as Pakistan and Turkey who fare worse when it comes to crime.”

Figures from the Danish Correctional Services show that 27.6 percent of those incarcerated in Denmark are first- or second-generation migrants. Adding foreigners (a category that includes illegal immigrants, tourists, and others who don’t officially live in the country) to the count, over 31 percent of Denmark’s prison population is not Danish, representing a surge of 26.8 percent compared to 10 years ago. Here, again, there’s a clearly visible, troubling trend:

while the number of incarcerated immigrants and foreigners has remained relatively stable, the number of second-generation immigrants in prisons has risen steadily since 2014.

Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard wants tougher – and longer – sentences, particularly for serious violent crimes and rape. But Professor Andersen says the main advantage of longer sentences is that they keep perpetrators off the street. He does not believe there’s a significant deterrence factor in harsher punishments, but instead puts the focus on crime prevention and influencing imprisoned criminals “in a positive direction” so that they don’t go back to a life of crime following a prison sentence.

Crime prevention is also a part of Mr. Hummelgaard’s plan for criminal justice reform, as is expanding prisons and punishing less serious crimes in ways other than incarceration to create – or free up – space in prisons.

Aiming to alleviate the space crisis in the country’s jails, in 2021, Denmark signed an agreement with Kosovo for 300 places in a detention centre there. So far, no convicts from Denmark have been sent to the Kosovo prison.