On Wednesday, Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer (M) had invited the parties to a meeting at Rosenbad to discuss measures against gang crime.
I don't think it's just me who has the feeling that this is less and less about gang crime and more seems to be some kind of competition between the Social Democrats, the government and the Sweden Democrats, says David Sausdal, associate professor of sociology at Lund University.
After the meeting, Strömmer highlighted that the number of shootings has been halved, which is true. In 2022, Sweden had 390 shootings, and up until December 14 of this year, there have been 143 shootings, according to SVT.
The number of shootings has decreased significantly but is still at a level that is much higher than Norway, Finland and Denmark combined, says David Sausdal.
Twelve-year-old murder suspect
At the same time, it is visible how violence decreases with age.
Last Friday, a murder took place in Malmö, where the suspect is reportedly a twelve-year-old boy. In that case, he is the youngest perpetrator in a murder case in Sweden.
This is something that is very difficult for a criminologist and researcher in the field, but also as a person and a father, to both understand and accept, says Sausdal.
The government and the Sweden Democrats also want to lower the age of criminal responsibility from the current 15 years to 13 years. In Denmark, the age was lowered to 14 years, but returned to 15 after more young people began to commit crimes.
In Denmark it was counterproductive. There is no evidence that this would be positive, says Sausdal.
Invest in school
He lacks a larger debate in Sweden about the gaps in society and points out that Sweden has child poverty that is comparable to Eastern European countries. The quality of schools in vulnerable areas is another factor.
And there is a culture in Sweden where children want to be entrepreneurs and are happy to take part in a criminal "gig economy", rather than spend time on a long education.
Have a conversation about the dismantled welfare society. It would be a Christmas present to dare to have that discussion.
One issue that has been relevant is being able to deport all gang criminals with foreign citizenship. Sausdal sees this as more symbolic since it is unlikely to affect very many people. At the same time, much of the crime is controlled from abroad.
If I were to rate Chat GPT against Swedish criminal policy, I would say that Chat GPT provides much better suggestions, he says.
