25% of Norway Sex Offenders in 2015 Have Immigrant Background

© Fyodor Porokhin / Reuters

One in four sex offenses in Norway last year were committed by people with immigrant backgrounds, according to local broadcaster TV2.

Of 399 people convicted for this type of crime in Norway, 90 had an immigrant background.

According to Statistics Norway the immigrant population make up 15.6 percent of the population in Norway. The number includes immigrants and children born in Norway to two immigrant parents. The five largest immigrant groups in Norway are in turn Polish, Swedish, Somali, Lithuanian and Pakistani.

At the beginning of 1992 the immigrant population in Norway was 183,000 persons, or 4.3 per cent of the total population. 23 years later, at the beginning of 2015, the number had risen to 815,000 persons, (or 15.6 per cent of the population.) The immigration has increased drastically in recent years, with net immigration exceeding 40,000.

Unfortunately, these data are not all that helpful. They are for the beginning of 2015 whereas during 2015 many more migrants from Muslim countries entered Norway. Initially, the numbers don't look too terrible - 15.6% immigrants : less than 25% sex abusers. What would be helpful is if they could parse out the European immigrants from the Muslim immigrants. I suspect the ratio would be substantially higher.

Also, the stats of 90:399 are based on convictions. I don't know how efficient Norway's justice system is, but I suspect that most sexual offences committed in 2015 have not reached conviction level.

So basically, this is a 'better than reality' report for Norway's problem with immigrant sexual abuse.

The country’s authorities have even recently launched anti-rape programs for migrants.

When deciding how to define an ‘immigrant,’ TV2 relied on Statistics Norway, which states the term refers to “a person born outside of the country to two foreign parents or born in Norway to two foreign-born parents.”

“It’s not necessary one’s ethnic background that can accurately explain these figures. It could be finances, it could be age, in this case it is almost exclusively men, so you can’t bring in gender but these are the kinds of factors you must take into account,” Kristian Gundersen, a professor of biology at the University of Oslo, told The Local.

News of sex offense cases has become frequent across Europe, with the influx of refugees exceeding one million over the last year.

In particular, the report comes just a day after a 16-year-old Afghan refugee, who had recently taken a course on how to behave towards women, was charged with raping a female employee at a refugee shelter in Belgium.

A few days earlier, four migrants were charged with raping and beating a 19-year-old female friend. The four also filmed the crime, with the video later being used as key evidence.

Earlier in February, Austria was shocked by the news of an Iraqi refugee raping a 10-year-old boy at a swimming pool in Vienna.