Percentage of population found guilty of offences
Birth cohort statistics for persons born 1958–2007, reported in decade cohorts
This focus report is based on the same material as the main report Födelsekohortstatistik. Registered residents of Sweden found guilty of offences between 1958 and 2007.
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- © Brottsförebyggande rådet 2025
- urn:nbn:se:bra-1301
Summary
Across the entire population studied, 20.2 per cent were found guilty at some point of offences (10.3% of women and 29.7% of men) and 2.3 per cent were sentenced to prison at some point. However, the proportion of those in the population who had been found guilty of offences was significantly higher among those born in the 1950s and ‘60s than among those born in the 1990s and 2000s.
Regardless of the decade in which offenders were born, theft offences were the most common type of offence of which women were found guilty, up to the age of 25. For men, offences against the Road Traffic Offences Act were the most common type of offence for people born in the 1980s and earlier. For men born in the 1990s, minor drug offences were the most common.
On average, each man in the population was found guilty once and each woman 0.2 times. The number of guilty findings per person was higher among those born in the 1950s and ‘60s than among those born in the 1990s and 2000s.
Both the proportion found guilty of offences and the proportion sentenced to imprisonment differed between groups according to background at birth. The highest shares are found among foreign-born individuals. Regardless of background at birth, the proportions were highest among those born in the 1980s and lowest among those born in the 2000s.
About the study
This focus report is based on the same material as the main report Födelsekohortstatistik. Registered residents of Sweden found guilty of offences between 1958 and 2007, published on Brå’s website. The population studied consists of persons born between 1958 and 2007, who were registered residents of Sweden at the age of 15 and were found guilty of offences between 1973 and 2023. The person must also have been a registered resident of the population at the time they were found guilty of the offence.
The main report examines the extent to which the population studied, divided into groups by year of birth (known as birth cohorts), was found guilty for offences 1973–2023 as they aged. Cohort statistics allow the population under study to be followed up over a long period of time. It thus complements the statistics on persons found guilty of offences, which report the number of persons found guilty of offences in a specific year by different variables.
This focus report complements the main report, but here the birth cohorts are instead grouped by decade, so-called decade cohorts. Thus, persons born in 1970–1979 are included in the 1970s group, and so on. he focus report also answers more direct questions. These include the proportion of the population ever found guilty of any offence and the corresponding proportion for specific types of offences, the proportion of the population sentenced to imprisonment, how the number of persons found guilty of an offence increased with age, and the importance of background at birth in cohort statistics.