An economist has calculated how much an average gang criminal, active for 15 years, is costing taxpayers in Sweden.

Ingvar Nilsson, an economist, has calculated that an average gang criminal, active for 15 years, costs Swedish taxpayers over 23 million kronor (more than 2 million euros). He also estimates that a shooting involving two victims costs society 75 million kronor.

As is known, gang crime has spread across Sweden, with any associated police work, medical care, judicial process (courts) and prison services costing enormous amounts for society, as a whole.

According to police, 14,000 people are involved in criminal networks. If each of them costs society 23 million kronor, the total bill for taxpayers would amount to SEK 322 billion, Mr. Nilsson said, stressing that these costs could rise further in the future.

“We arrived at this figure when we examined cases against the Sodertalje network a few years ago. We delved into databases, but most importantly, we conducted numerous interviews with those affected,”

– he said, as reported by the Swedish Samnytt news outlet. He added that costs were calculated for everything, from perpetrators and victims to police officers, healthcare professionals, judges, and social services workers.

In the meantime, another intriguing data point has surfaced, this time from Germany. The German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) employs nearly 6,000 freelance interpreters and language mediators. Specifically, the agency’s “language mediation staff” currently includes 5,960 individuals, according to a response from the interior ministry to a query by the leftist faction of the Bundestag, as reported by the German Nius news outlet.

The data reveals that 5,891 interpreters are technically equipped to provide interpreting services via video link between a migrant and a police officer, a service the authorities call “video language mediation,” Nius wrotes. The news portal also highlights that

The most frequently employed interpreters translate from Arabic.

However, the German interior ministry could not specify how much taxpayers spend on interpretation services. It stated that “fees are negotiated individually at the initiative of freelance language mediators, taking into account the interpreters’ specific qualifications.”