A recent report from the National Criminal Investigation Service (Kripos) states that as many as 74 per cent of the perpetrators in murder cases last year were outside the labour market.

At the same time, NTB and Klassekampen offer assurances that most of the perpetrators are “Norwegian citizens”. What they fail to problematise is that Norwegian citizenship in today’s Norway says very little about the perpetrator’s ethnic or cultural origins.

The figures from the Kripos report “National Homicide Overview” paint a clear picture of who commits the most serious crime in Norway. In 2025, 19 murders with 23 perpetrators were registered. The vast majority of these were claiming social security benefits or were unemployed. For the period 2015 to 2024, the figure is 61 per cent, but this has increased to almost three out of four last year.

There is a massive overrepresentation of people living off the state. Yet it’s the way the media choose to present citizenship that attracts the most attention for the observant reader.

“Norwegian citizens” as a smokescreen

Both NTB and Klassekampen make the point that the vast majority of the killers are Norwegian citizens. Klassekampen writes that in 2025, 83 per cent of the perpetrators had Norwegian citizenship. This is presented without reservation as proof that it is “Norwegians” who kill.

The reality is far more nuanced. The term “Norwegian citizen” includes anyone who has been granted a passport, regardless of whether they came to the country as an adult or were born here to foreign parents. By focusing exclusively on legal citizenship, the media camouflages the actual proportion of immigrants in the crime statistics.

Klassekampen admits far down in the text that around 15 per cent of the so-called Norwegian citizens in the ten-year period had a country of birth other than Norway. How many of the remainder are second-generation immigrants, the statistics say nothing about in these articles. Experience from previous reports shows that the category of “Norwegian citizen” is often actively used to mitigate the impression that the immigrant population is heavily overrepresented in violent crime.

Blaming the system and poverty

Instead of discussing cultural challenges or lack of integration, Klassekampen has brought in researchers who largely excuse the acts of murder on the grounds that the perpetrators are poor.

Kristian Heggebøß

Kristian Heggebø of the Nova Welfare Research Institute states that the uncertainty of losing one’s job can take its toll and lead to poor mental health. He believes that exclusion can act as a catalyst for pushing people into a life crisis that ends in murder.

This is a well-known explanatory model from the left. Responsibility is shifted from the individual who commits a cruel act to society, which allegedly has not provided enough benefits. Heggebø argues that the figures are proof of the demanding life situation of many people on benefits. The fact that the vast majority of minimum pensioners and disabled people would never think of killing someone does not seem to be part of the analysis.

Warns against Swedish conditions

Homicide researcher Vibeke Ottesen at the University of Oslo points out that “social minorities” are always overrepresented. The term “social minority” is often a euphemism that includes immigrant groups that struggle economically and socially.

Ottesen draws a parallel with Sweden and warns that young men who find they cannot achieve social mobility through legal means may resort to crime. She believes that low-poverty policies prevent murder.

What researchers and the media fail to discuss is the connection between high levels of immigration from non-Western countries and the increase in this particular group “outside the labour market”. When three out of four murderers are unemployed or on benefits, and we know that immigrants are heavily overrepresented in NAV statistics, there is reason to believe that the correlation is far greater than NTB’s headlines about “Norwegian citizens” give the impression.

By insisting on citizenship as the primary label, the media continues to obscure the actual social problems associated with immigration and crime. The fact of the matter is that those who kill in Norway are predominantly men who are supported by society, and many of them have roots in countries other than Norway, regardless of which passport they have in their drawer.