The Ministry of Justice is now sending out a new bill for consultation to stop gangs recruiting children and young people for violent acts.
The proposal means that the police will be able to order social media platforms to remove recruitment content as soon as possible and no later than one hour.
Similar to terrorism
Previously, there have been questions about whether such powers for the police conflict with EU rules, but the Ministry of Justice has now investigated the matter and sees no obstacle.
"The police should be able to take down gang recruitment advertisements in the same way they can today with regard to terrorist content," says Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer at the National Conference on People and Defence in Sälen.
National Police Commissioner Petra Lundh believes the proposal is a step forward. When the police scan social media today and discover attempts to recruit children into crime, they can only urge the social platforms. However, compliance with those requests is voluntary.
But when recruitment attempts move to encrypted apps, the new bill is not enough for the police to access them.
"It's a much bigger and different problem. People are moving to encrypted services like Signal and they don't cooperate with authorities at all," says Lundh.
Around the clock
Last year, over 50 children under the age of 15 were involved in legal proceedings, so-called evidentiary proceedings, involving murder or murder plots.
Until November 2025, 127 children under the age of 15 were suspected of involvement in murder or murder plots.
"It is a figure that should make the whole of society stop," Lundh says in her speech at the National Conference of People and Defence.
She announced that the police are now launching a national police operation aimed at stopping new recruitment. The aim is to put pressure on municipalities and their social services, among others, so that a child who is at risk of being recruited is taken care of that same evening - not the next weekday.
"In many municipalities, there is a lack of current situational awareness, routines and emergency services, which can result in a child who is found with a hand grenade in the evening being left without support the next morning. We cannot have it like that in Sweden," says Lundh.
"The police work 24/7. Criminals do too. Social Services must be given the conditions to do the same. Society must be prepared to act 24/7."
