Swedish crime figures for 2025: four movements to know

The Swedish Crime Prevention Council's final statistics for 2025 arrived this spring. Behind the totals are four movements, each saying something about where children are at risk in Sweden right now. Every figure below refers to reported offences, with everything that entails, and we return to that.

Four movements in the figures

• 27,117 sexual offences were reported in 2025, up 5 per cent from 2024.
• 3,802 of the reported rapes concerned children under 18. That is 12 per cent fewer than 2024, but still 26 per cent more than 2021.
• 4,664 reports of sexual molestation concerned children, a slight increase.
• 26,992 assault offences against children were reported, 3 per cent more than the year before. Nearly one in three reported assaults in Sweden concerns a child.

What a drop in reports means, and does not mean

Reported rapes of children fell by twelve per cent in a year. That may mean fewer crimes. It may also mean fewer crimes reached the police. Reporting statistics measure the contact between crime and the justice system, not crime itself.

The dark figure for sexual offences against children is large and well documented. Most children first tell someone as adults, if at all. So any single year's figure should be read with caution, and multi-year trends taken more seriously than changes between two years.

Where the statistics are thinnest

The police's own situation report on human trafficking shows the pattern: 185 trafficking reports in 2024, 18 prosecutions, zero convictions. Sweden has never convicted anyone of trafficking for forced labour. The gap between report and verdict is the single largest problem in Swedish child-protection statistics.

What you can do with this

Figures protect no children, but they steer where resources go. Anyone who wants to follow the development can read Brå's statistics directly; they are open and well documented. Anyone who meets children in their work can learn what a concern should lead to: 114 14 for the police when it is not urgent, 112 when it is, and social services in the child's municipality for a report of concern.

Sources: Brå, Reported offences 2025, final statistics, report 2026:9. Swedish Police, Human trafficking, situation report 26 for 2024.