Asylum seekers and crime

The choir that constantly wants stricter penalties and closed reception brings us no closer to the solution of problems.

Last Saturday wrote NRK journalists Arild Opheim and Elin Ruhlin Gjuvsland an article in Dagbladet on their investigations of two people who had robbed them earlier. 

It turned out that the robbers had been asylum seekers and Opheim and Gjuvsland began to examine more generally the rules for residence for asylum seekers. One of their conclusions is that there are aspects of the asylum system which increases the risk of crime. They point out that the fact that we largely leaves it to smugglers to decide who should come to Norway to seek asylum and that many asylum seekers may remain in the country after the rejection of an application for long periods without the ability to support themselves .

Although Opheim and Gjuvsland in reality only summarizes and exemplifies what the people working in this field have been saying all along, the op-ed writers as ears flutter (and then some) especially on social media. A few days later, three people were killed by an applicant in the tragic event in Sogn og Fjordane. The storm on social media lets naturally not long in coming and also from politicians come demands for secrecy reception, ie prison for asylum seekers. It is important in this context to recall at least two things: It's more than 10 000 asylum seekers to Norway every year and one of them has committed a serious crime. It is therefore difficult to draw any general conclusions from the statistics.

Furthermore, warns professionals strongly against the closed reception will increase your risk for serious crimes. We also know that the closed reception is extremely costly. It would thus appear that many seek an expensive measures that experts believe may have the opposite effect of what we want. Therefore, it is now every reason to take the time we need to think carefully about what works. An obvious measures must be

1) Send out those still going out as soon as possible

2) Provide those who can not be sent out at once able to feed themselves through work. It is disproportionately expensive and unnecessary interference with the individual's freedom to captivate a large group of people where most do not pose any threat.

Even with this one would have come a long way. The choir that constantly wants stricter penalties and closed reception brings us no closer to the solution of problems.