Matthias Zwai announces a new "gangster package," and experts criticize his talk of insecurity.

Justice Minister Matthias Zweij presented a new so-called “gang package,” a set of measures aimed at “spreading security” through a series of laws and procedures that would toughen penalties for young people who commit crimes.

When asked by a journalist, “Doesn’t the government fuel insecurity among the population when Tesfaye presents another gang package, and when the Prime Minister says she doesn’t dare go to “large parts of Greater Copenhagen”?“ Justice Minister Mathias Tesfaye replied, ”No,” and denied that people feel unsafe only because someone is talking about insecurity.

Experts criticize the government's insistence on talking about insecurity.

But many experts are far from agreeing with Tsvae, one of whom is criminologist and author Kasper Fisker, who, according to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, believes the opposite is true: “You actually become more insecure by talking about insecurity.”.

Tesfaye offered his perspective when he went for a walk one day with a journalist in Husum, an area in Greater Copenhagen where the insecurity rate is highest, and there the minister emphasized that he does not believe that “talk creates reality.”.

According to four experts interviewed by Danish Radio, those in power may increase citizens' sense of insecurity when they talk about it, and this can be done by highlighting rare cases of crime and frequently talking about insecurity as a problem in a society that is actually safe.

It is worth noting that the debate about insecurity has continued for several weeks after the government launched at the end of August a new set of gang packages called “Safe Communities Without Criminal Gangs”, which aims to make Danes safer through 30 initiatives, despite the fact that the vast majority of the Danish population feel safe in their neighborhood, according to a report from the Ministry of Justice, where 881,300 Danish residents said they felt safe in their neighborhood in 2021, an increase compared to the previous survey in 2019.

Youth crime has decreased in recent years.

In fact, there is no place where insecurity has increased significantly in recent years, as this has not appeared in any of the security surveys of the Ministry of Justice or the Copenhagen municipality. Moreover, youth crime and crime against citizens have decreased in Copenhagen for the fifth year in a row, which has led to a great deal of controversy and criticism of the government.

According to David Sosdall, a criminologist and assistant professor at Lund University, when there is a discrepancy between the actual figures and the insistence of politicians that there are major problems with insecurity, they help to fuel insecurity, and such types of data (like Mette Frederiksen's statement) can help to spread unnecessary fear among the population. .