Taxi drivers are over-represented when it comes to crime, especially sex crimes, TV4 has found in a survey.
Between January 2019 and August 2020, taxi drivers committed approximately 30,000 crimes. These include everything from traffic offences to aggravated assault on women and even murder, TV4 reported.
"There is a certain over-representation among those working within the taxi branch, so that they have more crime in their baggage than ordinary Swedish men. Even after a few years in the taxi industry, you already have an over-representation", Markus Edsbagge, section manager at the Swedish Transport Agency said.
According to the TV channel's survey, taxi drivers are twice as likely as Swedish men at large to commit such crimes as rape and sexual assault. Many of them are also repeat offenders.
"We have let in some people who shouldn't really be in the taxi industry right now", Edsbagge admitted.
At the same time, he underscored that it is difficult to revoke a taxi driver's license once it has been issued.
"You simply remove someone's ability to get an income", Edsbagge mused.
The committed offences led to the revocation of 511 taxi driver IDs and 328 warnings.
According to TV4, 97 percent of Sweden's registered taxi drivers are men. The Swedish Taxi Association's latest industry report said that "nearly half" of the country's taxi drivers are of foreign descent.
The Swedish Taxi Association in 2014 already warned that "without immigrants, the taxis would stop".
In the latest National Security Survey by the Crime Prevention Council (Brå), a record number of Swedes said that they have been exposed to crimes such as threats, assault, and robbery.
In a recent survey by the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet and pollster Sifo, nearly six out of ten Swedes said they want Sweden to change its laws and regulations to receive fewer refugees than today.
The recent increase in anti-immigration sentiment coincided with a remarkable u-turn by Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, who after years of denying any link between gang crime and immigration admitted the problem, pinning it on subpar integration.
