According to the National Board of Health and Welfare, 264 children and young people were prosecuted or tried for serious violent crimes, such as murder or arson linked to gang crime, between 2020 and 2024. One in ten was under 15.
Before the survey, the estimate was that 150–200 children had been prosecuted or tried for such crimes.
Now the National Board of Health and Welfare will take a closer look at all 264 cases to get a better picture of why some children are drawn into organized crime.
We will look at what risk factors we can identify – background factors and upbringing conditions – that are important to map, as well as what contact they have had with various actors, to see where society has failed these children, says department head Johanna Kumlin.
What do you think?