The Swedish government is now looking into making sentencing harsher for rapes. This comes after a new record number of reported rapes in 2019.

Currently the sentence for rape in Sweden is between 2 – 6 years prison, and for particularly serious cases of rapes it is between 5 – 10 years prison.

In an interview with Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the Justice Minister, Morgan Johansson admitted that there is now a major problem with rape in Sweden.

“Men’s violence against women is a major problem in society that has partially been overshadowed behind the discussion about organized crime.”

He also explained that they are now looking into increasing the sentences for rapists in Sweden, saying that “the whole point is that there will be a significant harshening.”

There have been many cases in Sweden where rapists have gotten away with very short sentences. Just recently a 48 year old man was sentenced to only 2.5 years prison after being convicted of raping a 7 year old girl.

Last year saw a record number of reported rapes in Sweden according to official statistics. A whopping 8350 rapes where reported in 2019, a 6% increase from the year before. Worryingly, in 3410 of these reported rapes, the victims were children aged 0 – 17 years.

Already in 2010 it was reported that Sweden had the 2nd highest number of reported rapes in the world, only after the African country of Lesotho. Since then there has been a significant increase in the number of reported rapes in Sweden.

Sweden has a worryingly low number of rapes that gets cleared. In 2018 only 7.4% of all rapes were cleared up by police. This means that not even 1 out of 10 rapes led to prosecution. One reason for the low number of cleared cases is that murders are taking up precious police resources.

The investigation into increasing the sentencing for rapes in Sweden will be done at the latest by the 31st of March 2021.