Your article is from 2024 and is uncritical reporting of raw data.
This is worth reading on Denmark.
https://refugeeswelcome.dk/en/information/focus/crime-among-refugees-and-descendants/
98.5% of refugees and their reunified family in Denmark do not commit crimes.
This means that only a small fraction of the group does commit crimes, and that number has been declining in recent years. The group is still overrepresented in crime statistics compared to ethnic Danes*, but there are a number of possible explanations for this, which will be discussed below.
In June 2026, research by the Rockwool Foundation showed that violence across ethnic groups is less commen than what is statistically expected. Non-Western individuals are thus more likely to commit violence against other non-Western individuals, while ethnic Danes are more likely to commit violence against other ethnic Danes.
For both ethnic Danes and non-Western foreigners in Denmark, crime rates are declining. The proportion of non-Western descendants with criminal records has dropped even more sharply, though from a significantly higher level. As a group, however, they have become less criminal.
The same trend is evident when looking specifically at refugees and their family members. Since 2020, there has been a significant decline in the share of young male refugees convicted of criminal offenses over the course of a year – from 3.8% in 2020 to 1.5% in 2023.
In 2024, the corresponding figure for young ethnic Danish men was 1.2%.
This means that today, 98.5% of refugees and reunified family are NOT convicted of a crime within a year, while the same is true for 98.8% of ethnic Danes.
This portion describes why you can’t directly compare small populations to large ones due to data being skewed
The crime index
In the public and political debate, it is often pointed out that non-Westerns immigrants and particularly their descendants are overrepresented in crime statistics. This is not wrong.
According to the publication from Statistics Denmark 'Indvandrere i Danmark 2025', male descendants from Lebanon, for example, have a so-called crime index of 386, while the corresponding figures for Somali, Syrian and Iraqi descendants are 316, 312 and 268 respectively. This means that these groups are 2-4 times as likely to commit crimes as the general population.
These are, however, relatively small groups, which means that a few individuals can skew the result.
The index figure for male Syrian descendants for example is based on only 901 people. With such a small group, it doesn’t take many additional people with or without criminal convictions to drastically skew the index figures. Therefore, crime index figures must be used with caution.
Another problem with relying too much on the crime index is that it is a relative measure: It compares one group’s crime rate to that of a larger group. Therefore, the index says nothing of the crime rate within a group but merely compares the crime rates of different groups with the crime rate of the population as a whole.
A group can have a high crime index – and thus be overrepresented – and still have a pretty low crime rate. And it is possible for the group’s index score to rise over time, even though the group becomes less criminal. When crime declines in society as a whole, the benchmark moves with it.
Therefore, the crime index cannot stand alone when examining the criminality of a group. It must be compared to absolute figures, and here the picture is – as shown above –unambiguous: The share of the population committing crime is declining, regardless of whether one looks at ethnic Danes, non-Western immigrants, or non-Western descendants.
Structural factors
Part of the explanation also lies in political choices.
The Rockwool Foundation has shown that lower benefits for refugees contribute to increased crime within this group. The significant reduction in benefits for refugees, which was introduced with the “starthjælp” program in 2002 and has since been continued under various names, has led to refugees committing more crime than they otherwise would have. For one thing, refugees became more likely to commit theft in supermarkets.
The research also shows a wide range of other negative consequences of low benefits: More refugee children performed poorly in school, fewer young people completed secondary education and more became dependant on public benefits. All of which contribute to circumstances that we know are associated with an increased risk of committing crime. And a loss for the economy as a whole. Low benefits for refugees have thus led to more crime.
This only makes it more concerning that the Danish parliament chose to continue the low benefits for non-Western foreigners with the social benefits reform that took effect in the summer of 2025.
Overrepresentation in crime statistics is thus, to a certain extent, a result of political choices. When a group’s means of subsistence is reduced, they seek other ways to make a living. A few of them choose a path of crime.
Ethnic profiling
The way the police conduct their work is also a factor. The Institute for Human Rights has investigated so-called ethnic profiling in Denmark and found that immigrants and their descendants – especially those originating from Middle Eastern and North African countries – are charged and arrested significantly more often than ethnic Danes, without this subsequently leading to a conviction. More than one in five charges against people from Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, and Somalia end without a conviction.
This overemphasis on foreigners in the work of the police may mean that ethnic minorities have a harder time “getting away with” crimes than ethnic Danes do.
It is of course only right that people are held accountable for the crimes they commit, but when efforts are directed at one ethnic group rather than another, it contributes to distorting the picture of who commits crime in society.
All of the above is not to say that foreigners would not be overrepresented in crime statistics if the aforementioned factors were taken into account. There is no way to know. But it is likely that the group would be less overrepresented. And it underscores the point that the responsibility for how foreigners fare in society does not lie with themselves alone.