Who are the Swedish child soldiers? ━ The European Conservative

We have previously reported on how Denmark and Norway are tightening their borders to combat the influence and influx of gangs from Sweden. But criminal networks that recruit young ‘child soldiers’ are of course also a major challenge for the Swedish authorities, challenging long-standing ideas about children, crime and punishment.

A development that is new to the Swedish police is that more and more children from well-functioning backgrounds, previously unknown to law enforcement, are becoming involved in gang violence.

“We have had a good understanding of the social risk factors for a long time, but that is no longer enough,” said police chief Carin Götblad of the National Operations Department in an interview with state broadcaster SVT.

The increasing number of children committing murder for money creates a whole new situation, said Götblad, who described the problem facing Sweden as unique in the West:

We have a situation where children themselves are seeking employment as murderers. There is nothing like it in modern times.

The Swedish justice system is largely based on the philosophy that criminals need rehabilitation, not punishment. Preventative measures, from fighting poverty to offering activities and building youth centers, have traditionally been seen as the most important ways to stop juvenile delinquency. But critics say Swedish politicians have no understanding of the new type of crime and are trying to combat it with outdated methods.

“Forget poverty, overcrowding and social exclusion,” Luay Mohageb, a police investigator with experience interviewing youth who commit violent crimes, told the Daily News. Days News. Mohageb writes in a debate article in Express that Sweden sees

an entire generation that has been socialized into pro-criminal values ​​and the idea that a criminal lifestyle generates social status. … They have learned this through a digital culture whose components are broken Swedish, obsession with money, honor and violence.

“They go through the same radicalization process as ISIS fighters,” he said.

The Social Democrats, currently in opposition in parliament, have proposed distributing an information leaflet called “Gang Talk” to schools to inform them about the potentially disastrous consequences of joining a criminal gang. Social Democrat MP Teresa Carvalo wants adults to warn children about gangs “in the same way we have always warned about dirty old men.” Emma Jaenson, opinion writer for the daily BLTwrites:

If one believes that gang crime can be eradicated through information, then that shows two things: first, there is a lack of understanding of what is happening, and second, there seems to be a complete lack of answers to contemporary problems.

Law enforcement alone cannot stop the rise in violent crime by young people; it will require a huge effort from society as a whole, Chief Götblad warned. Children at risk need to be identified early, she said, so that early intervention can be provided in families, especially those with “weak parenting skills.” However, the relatively light sentences for young criminals are also a problem, Götblad said:

If you’re under 18, the maximum sentence you can get is four years in juvenile detention. And we see that both the gang members who assign the tasks and the kids, the young people, factor that into their calculations — “it’s not that bad, I’ll get out” — and they do — or “I’ll get out quickly.”

She could not judge whether juvenile detention or prison is a better solution, but said: “These children are extremely dangerous and must be locked up, for their own good and for the good of society.”

As the number of children recruited to commit violent crimes on behalf of criminal networks increases, so does the number of young gang members desperate to get away.

Children’s rights organisation BRIS sees the consequences of children being recruited into violent crime. The organisation’s telephone and text hotline, where children can seek advice anonymously, has seen gang-related calls for support almost double since last year. The concerns young callers express range from fear of being recruited into criminal gangs to already being involved in a gang and not knowing how to get out. The problems often start when the children are 10-11 years old, BRIS Director General Magnus Jägerskog told SVT: “These are young people who have been lured into various networks, who are facing threats against themselves. They are suffering and want to get out.”

Recruiting children for criminal activities became a crime in Sweden last year. Since then, there have been only 20 convictions under the new law, most of them in connection with contract killings linked to the criminal network “Foxtrot” led by Rawa Majid, dubbed “the Kurdish Fox” by the media. Majid, whose network was hired by Israeli intelligence to carry out terrorist attacks by Iran, has been jailed in Iran for the past year, and his mother, who was convicted of money laundering in 2022, was arrested in Iran on Monday.