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The Swedish right-wing government is currently implementing extensive reforms in legal policy. The police are being given increased powers and thus sharper tools, especially in the fight against organized crime. At the same time, the penalties for many crimes are being significantly tightened. And the age of criminal responsibility is also being lowered from 15 to 13 for certain serious crimes.
It is this last point that is currently causing strong reactions in Sweden. Experts and debaters of all kinds believe that it is unreasonable to lock children in prison, even if they have carried out murder missions and are clearly a danger to themselves and, above all, to others.
The background to the reforms is the serious crime trend that has affected Sweden in recent decades. Crime in general is not increasing. This is an international trend and in Sweden many believe that it is related to a decrease in alcohol consumption. Young people spend more time at home in front of the computer instead of going out on the weekends and getting drunk, and thus also becoming perpetrators or victims of assault, burglary, rape, theft or even manslaughter and murder.
Crime has thus become fewer but unfortunately worse. Sweden now has a well-organized mafia crime.
The most visible part of that crime is where the criminals engage in drug trafficking and extortion. This is also where mindless violence occurs. Young people shoot each other to death for trivial reasons, and in recent years the criminals have started to involve very young people because they do not receive any real prison sentences if they are caught.
And this is where 13- and 14-year-olds have started to act as torpedoes for the criminal gangs.
One of the reform proposals that the new right-wing government and their support party, the Sweden Democrats, have put forward and which will now become a reality in 2026 is precisely the one that concerns lowering the age of criminal responsibility for certain serious crimes such as murder.
Different parts of Swedish society. Both the political class and lawyers have accepted that Sweden needs a new legal policy. But this particular measure: lowering the age of criminal responsibility has attracted a lot of criticism. From lawyers but also from many human rights organizations.
The Sweden Democrats’ legal policy spokesman Henrik Vinge defends the reforms and recently said in an interview on the YouTube channel Riks that as a politician he must take responsibility for the whole and ensure what is best for society at large. It is unique, he admits, to lower the age of criminal responsibility in the way that is now being done, but it is necessary. It is also important, says Vinge, to understand that the 13- or 14-year-olds who take on murder missions are not ordinary young people with stable home situations. These are young people who are often already institutionalized, who already have contact with criminal gangs and who are obviously allowing themselves to be exploited by criminals. The truth is, says Vinge, that these young people will be able to have a much more stable existence in a youth prison where they can certainly meet other young people in the same situation but where they are at least protected from older criminals.
Paulina Neuding, an editorial writer at the liberal-conservative Svenska Dagbladet, also defends the reform but believes that it risks being watered down. She believes that we must protect the children and young people who are victims of the shootings – here Neuding speaks of the “child perspective” – that are now being carried out on child soldiers and that might not actually be carried out if there were no such ones. But she also believes that the children who shoot must also be protected from the criminals who exploit them. And from that perspective, it is highly problematic that the government intends to give these young murderers sentence reductions that mean that they can only be out on the streets again after two or three years.
Whether you are for or against the new policy, you can therefore refer to the “child perspective” and to the “best interests of the child”.
The difference is perhaps that the ideological left only looks at the perspective of the young perpetrators. They are opposed to locking up 13-year-olds, even if being locked up is perhaps the best thing that can happen to these young people.