The Swedes are bending: reform of juvenile justice is overdue in Scandinavia

Sweden is preparing a real revolution in its juvenile justice system — the country intends to lower the age of criminal responsibility from the current fifteen to thirteen years. From now on, juvenile offenders will be sent to special prisons instead of social care institutions. This bill appeared four months before the parliamentary elections: child crime has become one of the key topics in the rhetoric of rival political forces. The country is shocked by the numerous murders committed by "soldiers" — the so-called underage killers in the service of ethnic gangs. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

A systemic challenge for the Swedish state

Recently, Sweden published a large-scale report on crime in this country. A study conducted by members of the state—funded NGO Sweden against Organized Crime identified more than 50,000 people directly involved in criminal networks, and up to 224,000 who are in the immediate vicinity of criminals and closely associated with them. The most relevant articles of Swedish criminal law are drug trafficking, violence, and theft. In the "core" 37% have only basic education, while only 3.6% have higher education. There are many people with a migration background among criminals and their entourage: almost 60% have at least one parent born abroad.

The turnover of local organized crime is estimated at 352 billion crowns per year (about 5.5% of the country's GDP), and the profit is 185 billion. It is noteworthy that 15% of the representatives of the criminal "core" are registered in "normal" jobs in such areas as security, social work, finance, and law. "The most alarming aspect for the Swedes is the penetration of crime into sensitive areas: from business and banks to social work and public administration. Criminals are legalized by setting up companies with a wide variety of fields of activity — construction, real estate, restaurants, transportation, cleaning, accounting and auditing. Many of the firms based on criminally acquired capital are actively seeking government orders. Such contracts give them legitimacy and access to the state budget. All this turns the fight against organized crime into a systemic challenge for the Swedish state," Maxim Reva, a political analyst, told Izvestia.

The report also notes that private successes in the fight against crime (arrests, seizures) have a temporary effect, because as a rule, the "six" are under attack, and the heads of criminal networks remain at large. As a rule, the heads of ethnic gangs operating in Sweden run their "business" remotely, from abroad. "Organized crime in Sweden is not a parallel underground world, but an ecosystem closely intertwined with ordinary life. She lives off the vulnerabilities in what is created for the well-being of the population: the opportunity to establish companies, participate in tenders, receive benefits. Without systematic analysis and interagency data exchange, even the most successful operations will only cut branches without touching the roots," the authors of the Sweden against Organized Crime report sum up.

Mowgli's "Tricks"

On May 12, one of the most influential Swedish criminals was detained in Tunis. Mohamed Mohdi is a member of Foxtrot, the most powerful ethnic gang operating in Scandinavia. Mohdi was the right-hand man of Foxtrot leader Rava Majid (nicknamed "The Kurdish Fox"), who fled Sweden to Turkey a few years ago. Notably, Mohdi is known not only in criminal circles. Before he completely immersed himself in criminal activity, he was a fairly popular rap artist who performed under the creative pseudonym Mowgli. But in 2022, Mowgli announced his retirement from music, saying that music was just a hobby for him and nothing more.

Mohamed Mohdi is known for his cruelty. So in January 2023, he ordered the murder of a 15-year-old teenager who was shot dead in a restaurant in Stockholm's Skugos district. Earlier, the victim was hired by a rival gang and shot at the house where a close relative of Rava Majid lived (for which he received the equivalent of 7,500 euros). Foxtrot leaders regarded the attack as a "declaration of war" and initiated "retaliation."

In the spring of this year, Mowgli himself hired a 15-year-old girl who shot and killed two members of a rival gang in the cities of Worby and Malmo. In total, the Swedish prosecutor's office has collected convincing data on the involvement of the ex-rapper in more than ten serious crimes, including organizing murders and drug trafficking. When they started looking for him too actively, Mowgli escaped from Sweden and moved to Tunisia, where he is from. The bandit followed strict measures of secrecy and successfully led the police by the nose for some time. But the Swedish authorities attached such importance to his capture that at the end of April, Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer personally arrived in Tunis. He handed over to the Tunisian authorities all the information the Swedes had about Mowgli. This data helped to calculate the mafia's hideout and take him into custody.

It should be noted that the recruitment of minors for killer "work", which Mohdi specialized in, is the handwriting of ethnic gangs from Sweden. "They explain to the youngsters that if they are caught, they will not face too serious punishments — a maximum of several years in correctional colonies, where the contingent is kept with all possible comfort. In addition, the youngsters are lured by promises of high social status, which they supposedly can achieve by starting a career in the ranks of the gang, as well as easy money, access to weapons and drugs. The Swedish press dubbed such teenagers hired by gangs as "soldiers," says Maxim Reva.

Back in 2024, the Danish TV channel TV 2 announced the prices for the services of young killers from Sweden. In ads posted on the Internet, young criminals are asked to shoot the victim in the head or throw a hand grenade at her. Prices range from 300,000 to 500,000 Swedish kronor (approximately 2.5 — 4 million rubles). The police state the occurrence of a phenomenon they call "violence as a service": both the customers of crimes and underage perpetrators are well aware of special channels in messengers where they can receive an order for another murder and agree on payment details.

This phenomenon, like a cancerous tumor, is spreading to neighboring EU countries. In particular, the recent invasion of "soldiers" (as a rule, they are also recruited from among migrants) has become a terrible problem for Denmark. Last year, the Danish police conducted a major operation against the "operators" of these "biodrons", during which seven people were arrested — some of them were extradited from Sweden and Morocco. They were detained after law enforcement officers managed to extract and decrypt the correspondence of the criminals from the messengers, with which they coordinated their actions.

The youngest killer in history

At the end of last year, an event occurred that unpleasantly struck even those Swedes who were already accustomed to the daily news about the latest escapades of criminals: robberies, street shootings and explosions. Late in the evening on December 12, 2025, in the city of Malmo, an Audi passenger car was driving along Galgebaksavegen Street in the Oxy area. Another car caught up with her, and several shots were fired from it. One bullet hit a 21-year-old boy sitting in the back seat of an Audi. His terrified friends ran away, leaving the guy to die. The police found an abandoned car in the Hindby area. The victim, who had bled out, was taken to the hospital, but it was too late to save his life.

The police launched an investigation, and soon detained a 12-year-old teenager who came to Malmo to commit the murder ordered by him. It turned out that one of the gangs instructed him to remove several of his competitors in this city, for which he paid 250,000 kronor (over 2 million rubles). The tragicomedy of the situation lies in the fact that the young shooter missed — he was "ordered" by a completely different person who was sitting next to the victim. The detainee turned out to be the youngest killer in the country's history: 14- and 16-year-old murderers had been caught before, but never before by 12-year-olds. Because of his age, the boy was not sent to prison (so far in Sweden it is forbidden to take into custody persons under the age of fifteen), but was sent to a specialized institution for teenagers.

Even the battered police officers were unpleasantly impressed. Rasem Chebil, an operative at the Malmo Police Investigation Department, told reporters: "It scares me. Where are we going? How can you even order a murder for such young people?" The Interior Ministry held a series of emergency meetings on the use of juvenile "labor" by criminals. They said that social services need much more tools and resources to work with children. It turned out that the 12-year-old killer was in the field of social services, but due to the limited resources they had, he escaped from custody. And when there are not enough forces and means, it remains to resort to exhortation. "I want to tell the children and youth that the police and society want to help you. Carrying out such orders and committing acts of violence will have consequences for the rest of your life," Rasem Shebil appeals.

Parliamentary elections will be held in Sweden on September 13. On the eve of this event, the ruling coalition in the Riksdag decided to score points in the eyes of voters. A bill has been prepared lowering the age of criminal responsibility from the current fifteen to thirteen years and allowing children to be sent to prisons instead of special institutions of the social care system. Parliament will vote on this bill on June 15 — and, apparently, it will be adopted, despite the protests of the opposition liberal parties. In particular, representatives of the Centrist and Leftist parties vehemently object, saying that "prisons are not a place for 13—year-olds."

However, the advocates of tougher measures have their compelling arguments. Justice Minister Gunnar Stremmer, presenting the bill, cited shocking figures: nine out of ten young bandits who have passed through juvenile correctional centers soon commit crimes again, and eight out of ten end up in adult prisons. Fifty-two children under the age of fifteen have recently appeared in court in Sweden on charges of murder or attempted murder. "We're not talking about thefts, or even assaults or robberies — we're talking about murders," Stremmer specifically emphasized.

Thus, apparently, special prisons will soon appear in Sweden, where minors under the age of thirteen will be sent as punishment for murder, robbery and rape. It is planned that one of these institutions will be the Rosersberg prison north of Stockholm. The cells here will be locked every day at eight in the evening. In their free time, young prisoners will be able to watch TV, play video games and work out in the gym. Mobile phones will be banned, but there will be chess lessons to develop concentration. Prison governor Gabriel Wessman says that young criminals will "grow up here" after going through puberty. When asked about providing for the emotional needs of the imprisoned children, Wessman replied: "Maybe we should make sure that there is a soft toy in each cell."