The number of cars set ablaze in Sweden's big cities is increasing because people are poor, a researcher says.

Approximately 200 cars have been set alight in Malmo so far this year, while this city had the highest number of car fires among all the municipalities in Sweden last year. Why car arson has become such a popular pastime in the country’s multicultural areas in recent years has given a headache to both the police and criminologists, but now researcher Manne Gerell claims to have found the reason.

„Malmo has quite large vulnerable areas. This type of crime typically takes place in poor neighbourhoods and the perpetrators are usually young people,” said Manne Gerell, a criminologist at Malmo University.

Gerell believes that mitigating poverty and vulnerability could possibly help prevent arson. Reducing segregation could also be an effective solution to the problem, the criminologist said, explaining that this would prevent gangs of young people with migrant background from encouraging each other to engage in crimes.

In 2017, Gerell found that car fires often occurred in so-called socially and economically vulnerable areas with high youth and immigrant populations and low level of collective cohesion and poor ability to deal with problems.

Anyone being convicted of these crimes is rather rare, which poses another problem. Last year, mere 13 cases were solved in the entire southern district while several hundred cars had been destroyed.