Code 291 — what happened, what was true, and what wasn't

Relation code 291 was introduced on 26 October 2015 by the National Operations Department (Noa) in the Storm dispatch system, to register incidents "related to the migrant situation". It was tied to the national operation Alma.

The police refused to release data during the ongoing operation. An internal directive stated: "Nothing is to leave in writing regarding the Alma deployment while it is under way."

When the operation was reported in February 2016: 831 assault reports and 484 threat/harassment reports were registered at asylum accommodation between 11 Nov 2015 and 31 Jan 2016. Around 4,000 records with R291 — roughly 1% of all incident reports in the period.

Distribution of R291 events: surveillance 19%, person/vehicle checks 15%, assault 12%. In 67.7% of crimes at accommodation, both perpetrator and victim were asylum seekers.

That the code was a system to remove immigrant crime from the statistics.

R291 was an administrative resource code used to measure the scope of the operation. Crime reports were filed in the normal system. Most R291 entries concern non-criminal events (surveillance, checks).

That crime statistics were manipulated through the code.

The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) has long published periodic reports on the background of suspects (most recently 2021:9). Statistics on the origin of suspects are publicly available — see this site's Crime section.

That the code is still used to conceal crime.

Operation Alma was ended and reported openly in February 2016. Operation commander Stefan Hector stated: "There is nothing in this that is secret." After the operation ended, the data was released.