ABSTRACT
This chapter aims at improving the knowledge base regarding the rates and spatial distribution of crimes in Sweden. Both property and violent crimes are concentrated in urban areas, but across the country the pattern is patchy. Municipalities with either high or low property crime rates are found located close to each other. Regardless of the controversy about trends in violence, a more interesting issue is whether patterns of victimization vary over space and time. Just by looking at crime levels, one notices that in 2007, more violent offenses occurred in rural areas than if they had followed the national trend; more recorded cases than the expected in remote rural and more cases in accessible rural. For property crimes, an important change in the regional geography of crime between 1996 and 2007 is the shift of clusters of high rates of theft and residential burglary from Stockholm County to Skandia region.
