The Swedish government has announced plans to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 14 after dropping plans to lock up violent offenders as young as 13 in special prison units.
Earlier this month, Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer announced plans to cut the age from 15 to 13, but on June 11, he said there was not enough support in parliament for that and that he had agreed to compromise at 14.
“We are going to propose that the age of criminal responsibility should be cut to 14 instead of 13 years old,” Strommer told reporters.
Currently, anyone under 15 who is suspected of having committed a serious crime is sent to a youth home, run by social services, and cannot be sentenced to a custodial sentence in prison.
Strommer said in 2025 that more than 50 children under 15 were suspected of murder or attempted murder.
There has been a surge in gang crime and drug-related violence in Sweden over the past 20 years, and it now has one of the highest rates of shootings and bombings in Europe, dozens of which were carried out by minors.
Thousands of Gang Members
Swedish police estimate there are 17,500 active gang members and around 50,000 who are loosely associated with them.
Magnus Lindgren, a former police chief in Uppsala County and current secretary-general of the Safer Sweden Foundation, told The Epoch Times last year that there were about 15,000 “very dangerous criminals” in Sweden, who were divided evenly into biker gangs, football hooligans, and criminals from around 60 high-crime neighborhoods.
Organized crime gangs, such as the Foxtrot Network, use social media to recruit teenagers and children as young as 11 to commit acts of violence, including bombings and murders.
The recruiters, who operate anonymously, post adverts in special groups on social media apps and offer money through banking apps.
The EU’s law enforcement agency, Europol, launched Operational Taskforce GRIMM in April 2025 to target so-called “violence-as-a-service,” which it said often used “young perpetrators.”
After the 2022 elections, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the center-right Moderates, formed a government that includes the Christian Democrats and Liberals, but has the crucial support of the right-wing Sweden Democrats, who campaigned against immigration and in favor of tougher criminal justice measures.
Hellbound and Down 