Sweden was long seen as a peaceful paradise. Now, it has the second-highest gun crime rate in Europe, with gunmen as young as 13.
In this episode, we'll explore the complex reasons behind the violence, from issues with integration to a flood of cheap weapons.
We also look at the fierce debate: Should the government punish these children, or help them?
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something that might sound improbable: Swedish teenage gangsters.
[00:00:32] Over the past decade, Sweden has seen a rise in violent crime, with an increasing amount committed by children.
[00:00:41] And in this episode, we’ll explore why this is, whether it is as great a problem as some have made it out to be, and what the country is doing about it.
[00:00:53] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:59] Let me start this episode by painting you a picture. This isn’t an invented story; it’s true, it’s something that happened to me just a few weeks ago.
[00:01:11] It was around 6 o’clock in the afternoon. I had picked up my kids from their respective schools, and we’d been playing in the park with friends. Football, swings, hide and seek.
[00:01:25] On the way back home, one of my sons heard a helicopter flying overhead. He’d seen a helicopter before, but for this two-year-old, it was a pretty exciting sight for an otherwise uneventful Wednesday afternoon.
[00:01:42] It seemed to be hovering over our heads, but after finally managing to persuade him to wave goodbye to it, we set off on the short journey home.
[00:01:55] I didn’t think much more of it, but as we were eating dinner an hour or so afterwards, my son pointed out of the window. The helicopter was still there, circling.
[00:02:09] I had my suspicions about what this might mean, but I invented some excuse: perhaps someone had lost their teddy bear or something.
[00:02:19] After they had got to bed, I checked the news, and my suspicions were confirmed.
[00:02:27] Just around the time we had finished in the playground, a member of the public had made a grim discovery in a nearby car park.
[00:02:37] The lifeless bodies of two men.
[00:02:41] The police had been called, the area cordoned off, and the helicopters were not searching for a child’s lost teddy bear, but for a murderer, a murderer who may very well have been a child themself.
[00:02:58] Now, as of the time of recording this episode, the police haven’t released any further information about the case. They immediately announced that they suspected it was part of an ongoing turf war between feuding gangs in the north of the city, the city of Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden.
[00:03:20] The two men were well-known to the authorities, the police said.
[00:03:25] Nevertheless, the case was shocking. The area where they were found is a leafy, residential, and safe area; it’s not gang territory. The dead men had been left in a parked car in the car park of a neighbourhood supermarket, right next to a football club where hundreds of children were happily practising.
[00:03:51] It was shocking to me because I live just a few hundred metres away; my nearest supermarket, a place I often pass through with my kids, is that very supermarket.
[00:04:03] But to the Swedish police, unfortunately, this has become somewhat of a regular occurrence.
[00:04:11] In 2022, there were 391 recorded shootings - more than one a day.
[00:04:21] It’s not just guns; that same year, there were 149 recorded explosions, with everything from grenades being thrown through apartment windows to bombs being planted behind doors.
[00:04:37] And let’s remember, Sweden is a small country, a country of just over 10 million people.
[00:04:45] What this has meant is that it now has the grim title of the second-highest gun crime rate in Europe, with the per capita murder rate in Stockholm an astounding 30 times that of London.
[00:05:02] And to make matters even scarier, the perpetrators of this violence are not always grown men, seasoned criminals who have spent more time inside prison than out.
[00:05:16] They are often teenagers, young boys. Indeed, in 2022, almost half the suspects in gun-related murders were between the ages of 15 and 20.
[00:05:33] And shockingly, sometimes they are even younger. In early October, six people were shot in a town north of Stockholm. The shooter, according to police, was only 13 years old.
[00:05:50] So, what’s going on?
[00:05:53] To most people, the image they have of Sweden is one of beautiful lakes, stylish men and women with great hair and flawless English, IKEA furniture, not of violence and murder.
[00:06:07] Well, like any complex problem, there are differing viewpoints on the causes and, therefore, the solutions.
[00:06:16] What is unfortunately undeniable is that the situation is out of hand. Gun-related violence has been rising in Sweden over the past 20 years or so, bucking the trend of every other European country. Some years it has come down, and indeed it has come down slightly since 2022, but the overall trend is upwards.
[00:06:43] And the age of the perpetrators, those pulling the triggers, planting the bombs and throwing the grenades, has unfortunately been trending downwards; the killers have been getting younger.
[00:06:57] According to Brå, which is the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, there are several factors behind this.
[00:07:08] Firstly, the makeup of criminal gangs in Sweden has changed. Historically, they were more hierarchical, with a big boss controlling large parts of an area’s criminal activity.
[00:07:22] Starting in the early 2010s, however, it's become more regional, with smaller, more local gangs that exerted tighter control especially over an area’s drug market.
[00:07:36] These gangs also became more willing to use violence, and in particular, lethal force to resolve disputes.
[00:07:46] Previously, resorting to murder was a serious affair that might require approval from the upper echelons of the organisation; with smaller, more fragmented groups, lethal force often became the primary way to resolve a conflict, even ones that might previously have been resolved in non-violent ways, or at least, with non-lethal force.
[00:08:13] And from this emerged a new type of criminal: the teenage killer.
[00:08:20] To quote directly the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, “These individuals did not always have strong personal stakes in the disputes but were often recruited to carry out violent acts, driven by the promise of status and money. Compared to previous periods, there seems to have been a devaluation in the status of executing certain types of shootings, with younger individuals with limited experience from the criminal milieu taking in these tasks.”
[00:08:55] End quote.
[00:08:57] In other words, these young people, boys mainly, would carry out contracts on behalf of gangs, killing members of rival gangs, or even their families, for cash.
[00:09:10] In interviews, young people are often very open about what is offered to them, usually coming through encrypted messaging apps and even social media: €5,000 for shooting someone in the leg, €15,000 to kill.
[00:09:27] The offer is placed, a job accepted, and the child is then given the name and details of the target, and provided with a weapon to commit the deed, often with an apparent complete indifference to its consequences.
[00:09:45] In the case of the 13-year-old suspected of having shot six people in early October, his social worker had asked him where he was, because they suspected he might have got involved in the wrong circles.
[00:10:00] And he reportedly texted back with “check the news, hehe”.
[00:10:06] Now, why are kids getting drawn into the world of crime?
[00:10:11] Well, the primary motivation seems to be financial. Criminal gangs are not only offering large amounts of money, but also posting on social media about what this money brings: cars, designer clothes, and the latest electronics.
[00:10:29] And most of these teenage criminals are coming from worlds where this seems out of reach.
[00:10:37] Although the Swedish police doesn’t release statistics on the backgrounds of those charged with or suspected of crime–especially minors–the trend is that these children typically come from second-generation immigrant backgrounds, often with parents on low incomes.
[00:10:56] To these children, entering the criminal world offers an easy ticket to riches, one job, just an hour’s work, and you can get paid more than your entire family might make in a year.
[00:11:12] It is, on one level, unsurprising that someone in such a situation might be tempted by such an offer.
[00:11:20] But this is not a uniquely Swedish situation; the world over, criminal gangs use children to carry out tasks for them, from carrying drugs to hiding weapons, and the offer of quick and easy money is as attractive to a boy in Stockholm as in São Paulo.
[00:11:41] So, what’s different about Sweden?
[00:11:44] Well, according to some commentators, this is a problem deeply linked to immigration. Until fairly recently, Sweden had a very generous immigration policy, and hundreds of thousands of people immigrated to the country, often from countries ravaged by war.
[00:12:04] Integrating these immigrants has not been easy, and there is no Swedish politician, to my knowledge, who says integration has been a resounding success; on the left, politicians admit that there is still a lot of work to do, and on the right, especially the further right, there are those who wish to paint immigrants as the source of all Sweden’s problems.
[00:12:30] On one level, life as an immigrant is easier in Sweden than in most countries. The state provides you with free healthcare, childcare, school and university, benefits if you are unable to find work, and housing if you need it. Unlike some countries, in Sweden, nobody should ever be forced to live in abject poverty, as the state will provide for you.
[00:12:58] But many immigrants report feeling that they are treated as second-class citizens. They live in ghettoised areas where few people speak Swedish, so they have limited chance to learn the language.
[00:13:13] They cannot find work, and do not feel like this will ever change. And it is these people’s children, typically, children who were born in Sweden, but to immigrant parents, who tend to be the ones picking up the weapons. They see their parents, uncles, aunties, and cousins, and don’t see any way out. This makes them easy targets for criminals.
[00:13:40] But, again, this is not a uniquely Swedish problem. Many other European countries have similar levels of immigration, similar problems with integration, and haven’t seen a consequent rise in gun violence.
[00:13:56] So, yes, it may be a factor, but we need to look at what else there may be.
[00:14:03] One thing that is more unique to Sweden is that it has a particularly forgiving justice system when it comes to children.
[00:14:12] Of course, in most countries, children are treated differently from adults, but Sweden is particularly lenient: children under the age of 15 cannot be tried in court, no matter what they do. Even between the ages of 15 and 17, prison is seen as an absolute last resort, and they are usually sent to social services.
[00:14:41] And it doesn’t stop there. Even if you’re 19 or 20, so legally an adult in most countries, the courts are still required to treat you as a “young person”. This means lighter sentences, no life imprisonment, and often, rehabilitation programmes instead of standard prison time.
[00:15:05] The idea behind all of this is simple, and in many ways admirable.
[00:15:11] The Swedish justice system believes that young people can change, that criminal behaviour as a child is often a sign of social problems, not of inherent evil.
[00:15:24] Poverty, unstable families, poor schooling, these aren’t a child’s fault, and it is these that push a child towards crime, so the argument goes.
[00:15:37] So the role of the state is to rehabilitate, not to punish.
[00:15:43] But there’s a problem.
[00:15:46] This lenient and forgiving system was designed for the occasional teenage troublemaker: the boy who steals a bike or gets into fights at school. It wasn’t designed for a generation of teenage hitmen.
[00:16:03] And gangs have quickly figured out that these lenient laws are a gift.
[00:16:10] They recruit children under the age of 15 precisely because they know those children cannot go to prison, so the children have less to fear.
[00:16:21] They’ll be back on the street within days, if not hours.
[00:16:26] For gang leaders, that makes these boys the perfect soldiers: disposable, fearless, and legally, almost untouchable.
[00:16:37] And so, a system built on compassion has become, unintentionally, a tool for exploitation.
[00:16:46] And there is another factor too, linked to immigration, but indirectly: after the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, Sweden welcomed tens of thousands of refugees from the Balkans.
[00:17:01] These were people fleeing brutal conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo, wars that had torn apart families, communities, and entire countries.
[00:17:14] Sweden opened its doors, as it has always done, and offered safety, housing, and the chance for refugees to rebuild their lives.
[00:17:24] But among the refugees were a minority of former soldiers, militia members, and people with links to organised crime.
[00:17:35] And after the war, the Balkan region was flooded with small arms, such as pistols, grenades, and automatic weapons.
[00:17:45] By some estimates, millions of unregistered weapons were circulating in the Balkans in the years after the conflict. In cupboards, in wardrobes, under the bed.
[00:17:57] And in the following decades, many of them would make their way into Sweden.
[00:18:04] And they still do, with one estimate suggesting that three new weapons arrive in Sweden every single day, and police often tracing the origins of firearms used in shootings back to the Balkans.
[00:18:21] This is a key reason why there are so many weapons in Sweden, compared to other Nordic countries.
[00:18:28] So, you have this array of different factors: an increasingly segmented criminal world willing to use lethal force, a pool of willing children, a lack of economic opportunities, a justice system based on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and enough weapons to form a small army.
[00:18:51] And the result, well, unfortunately, you can open the front page of any Swedish newspaper and see it almost every day.
[00:19:00] The question now is what to do about it.
[00:19:03] And this, as you might imagine, is the subject of great debate.
[00:19:09] Some believe the answer lies in getting tougher on crime.
[00:19:14] The Swedish government, which has shifted to the right after 2022, has promised what it calls “a paradigm shift” in how the country deals with crime.
[00:19:27] The Prime Minister has spoken about “breaking the gangs’ backs”, and his government has already introduced a series of measures that mark a sharp turn away from Sweden’s traditionally liberal approach.
[00:19:42] Among the most controversial proposals is to lower the age of criminal responsibility.
[00:19:49] Under the current law, as you heard, anyone under the age of 15 cannot be tried or sentenced.
[00:19:57] But under new proposals, prosecutors would be able to charge younger offenders for serious crimes, such as murder, attempted murder, or bombings, with some in government pushing for children as young as 13 to be tried as adults.
[00:20:16] The government has also introduced harsher penalties for crimes connected to gang networks, meaning that even being part of a criminal organisation could carry longer sentences.
[00:20:29] Police have also been given broader powers to intercept encrypted messages, use facial recognition technology, and conduct preventive searches, which allow them to stop and search people even if they’re not suspected of a specific crime.
[00:20:46] Now, critics say these measures have gone too far; they are the sort of things more commonly associated with countries like France or the UK, not famously liberal Sweden.
[00:20:59] The government, however, argues that the situation demands it; desperate times call for desperate measures. Sweden’s liberal justice system isn’t adequately equipped to deal with the level of criminality that exists today. This isn’t the time for philosophical debate about rehabilitation, so the argument goes; it’s a fight to restore order.
[00:21:24] But there is, of course, another camp.
[00:21:27] Many Swedes believe that these measures may address the symptoms of the violence, but not the root cause.
[00:21:36] Harsher punishments and police powers might make voters feel safer in the short term and put a bunch of young men behind bars, but in the long term, they aren’t really solving anything.
[00:21:51] Instead, they call for greater investment in schools, housing, and integration. In other words, tackling the reasons why these children end up in gangs in the first place, not punishing them after they’ve pulled the trigger.
[00:22:08] Using the carrot, not the stick.
[00:22:11] Now, the one thing I want to add here is my own perspective.
[00:22:17] I live in Sweden, and I often see scaremongering stories by foreign media outlets, often right-leaning ones, portraying the country as some extremely dangerous, crime-filled warzone, with immigrants as the culprits.
[00:22:35] Yes, it is frightening to think that this is happening close to where my family lives, and I certainly wish it were different.
[00:22:43] But this violence is predominantly gang on gang, and my experience so far is that cities in Sweden feel much safer than places like London or Paris. And pinning all of the blame on immigration is, in my opinion, a gross simplification of a complicated problem.
[00:23:07] To wrap things up, Sweden is a wonderful place, but it’s neither the socialist utopia nor hellhole it’s painted out to be.
[00:23:16] And, no matter their political persuasion, everyone in Sweden wants to return to a situation where shootings are not a daily occurrence, but the question of how to get there is far from resolved.
[00:23:33] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on Sweden’s Teenage Gangsters.
[00:23:39] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:23:42] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:23:46] Are you from Sweden, or have you visited Sweden? What are your thoughts on the issue, the root causes, and what can be done about it?
[00:23:54] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:24:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:24:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something that might sound improbable: Swedish teenage gangsters.
[00:00:32] Over the past decade, Sweden has seen a rise in violent crime, with an increasing amount committed by children.
[00:00:41] And in this episode, we’ll explore why this is, whether it is as great a problem as some have made it out to be, and what the country is doing about it.
[00:00:53] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:59] Let me start this episode by painting you a picture. This isn’t an invented story; it’s true, it’s something that happened to me just a few weeks ago.
[00:01:11] It was around 6 o’clock in the afternoon. I had picked up my kids from their respective schools, and we’d been playing in the park with friends. Football, swings, hide and seek.
[00:01:25] On the way back home, one of my sons heard a helicopter flying overhead. He’d seen a helicopter before, but for this two-year-old, it was a pretty exciting sight for an otherwise uneventful Wednesday afternoon.
[00:01:42] It seemed to be hovering over our heads, but after finally managing to persuade him to wave goodbye to it, we set off on the short journey home.
[00:01:55] I didn’t think much more of it, but as we were eating dinner an hour or so afterwards, my son pointed out of the window. The helicopter was still there, circling.
[00:02:09] I had my suspicions about what this might mean, but I invented some excuse: perhaps someone had lost their teddy bear or something.
[00:02:19] After they had got to bed, I checked the news, and my suspicions were confirmed.
[00:02:27] Just around the time we had finished in the playground, a member of the public had made a grim discovery in a nearby car park.
[00:02:37] The lifeless bodies of two men.
[00:02:41] The police had been called, the area cordoned off, and the helicopters were not searching for a child’s lost teddy bear, but for a murderer, a murderer who may very well have been a child themself.
[00:02:58] Now, as of the time of recording this episode, the police haven’t released any further information about the case. They immediately announced that they suspected it was part of an ongoing turf war between feuding gangs in the north of the city, the city of Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden.
[00:03:20] The two men were well-known to the authorities, the police said.
[00:03:25] Nevertheless, the case was shocking. The area where they were found is a leafy, residential, and safe area; it’s not gang territory. The dead men had been left in a parked car in the car park of a neighbourhood supermarket, right next to a football club where hundreds of children were happily practising.
[00:03:51] It was shocking to me because I live just a few hundred metres away; my nearest supermarket, a place I often pass through with my kids, is that very supermarket.
[00:04:03] But to the Swedish police, unfortunately, this has become somewhat of a regular occurrence.
[00:04:11] In 2022, there were 391 recorded shootings - more than one a day.
[00:04:21] It’s not just guns; that same year, there were 149 recorded explosions, with everything from grenades being thrown through apartment windows to bombs being planted behind doors.
[00:04:37] And let’s remember, Sweden is a small country, a country of just over 10 million people.
[00:04:45] What this has meant is that it now has the grim title of the second-highest gun crime rate in Europe, with the per capita murder rate in Stockholm an astounding 30 times that of London.
[00:05:02] And to make matters even scarier, the perpetrators of this violence are not always grown men, seasoned criminals who have spent more time inside prison than out.
[00:05:16] They are often teenagers, young boys. Indeed, in 2022, almost half the suspects in gun-related murders were between the ages of 15 and 20.
[00:05:33] And shockingly, sometimes they are even younger. In early October, six people were shot in a town north of Stockholm. The shooter, according to police, was only 13 years old.
[00:05:50] So, what’s going on?
[00:05:53] To most people, the image they have of Sweden is one of beautiful lakes, stylish men and women with great hair and flawless English, IKEA furniture, not of violence and murder.
[00:06:07] Well, like any complex problem, there are differing viewpoints on the causes and, therefore, the solutions.
[00:06:16] What is unfortunately undeniable is that the situation is out of hand. Gun-related violence has been rising in Sweden over the past 20 years or so, bucking the trend of every other European country. Some years it has come down, and indeed it has come down slightly since 2022, but the overall trend is upwards.
[00:06:43] And the age of the perpetrators, those pulling the triggers, planting the bombs and throwing the grenades, has unfortunately been trending downwards; the killers have been getting younger.
[00:06:57] According to Brå, which is the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, there are several factors behind this.
[00:07:08] Firstly, the makeup of criminal gangs in Sweden has changed. Historically, they were more hierarchical, with a big boss controlling large parts of an area’s criminal activity.
[00:07:22] Starting in the early 2010s, however, it's become more regional, with smaller, more local gangs that exerted tighter control especially over an area’s drug market.
[00:07:36] These gangs also became more willing to use violence, and in particular, lethal force to resolve disputes.
[00:07:46] Previously, resorting to murder was a serious affair that might require approval from the upper echelons of the organisation; with smaller, more fragmented groups, lethal force often became the primary way to resolve a conflict, even ones that might previously have been resolved in non-violent ways, or at least, with non-lethal force.
[00:08:13] And from this emerged a new type of criminal: the teenage killer.
[00:08:20] To quote directly the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, “These individuals did not always have strong personal stakes in the disputes but were often recruited to carry out violent acts, driven by the promise of status and money. Compared to previous periods, there seems to have been a devaluation in the status of executing certain types of shootings, with younger individuals with limited experience from the criminal milieu taking in these tasks.”
[00:08:55] End quote.
[00:08:57] In other words, these young people, boys mainly, would carry out contracts on behalf of gangs, killing members of rival gangs, or even their families, for cash.
[00:09:10] In interviews, young people are often very open about what is offered to them, usually coming through encrypted messaging apps and even social media: €5,000 for shooting someone in the leg, €15,000 to kill.
[00:09:27] The offer is placed, a job accepted, and the child is then given the name and details of the target, and provided with a weapon to commit the deed, often with an apparent complete indifference to its consequences.
[00:09:45] In the case of the 13-year-old suspected of having shot six people in early October, his social worker had asked him where he was, because they suspected he might have got involved in the wrong circles.
[00:10:00] And he reportedly texted back with “check the news, hehe”.
[00:10:06] Now, why are kids getting drawn into the world of crime?
[00:10:11] Well, the primary motivation seems to be financial. Criminal gangs are not only offering large amounts of money, but also posting on social media about what this money brings: cars, designer clothes, and the latest electronics.
[00:10:29] And most of these teenage criminals are coming from worlds where this seems out of reach.
[00:10:37] Although the Swedish police doesn’t release statistics on the backgrounds of those charged with or suspected of crime–especially minors–the trend is that these children typically come from second-generation immigrant backgrounds, often with parents on low incomes.
[00:10:56] To these children, entering the criminal world offers an easy ticket to riches, one job, just an hour’s work, and you can get paid more than your entire family might make in a year.
[00:11:12] It is, on one level, unsurprising that someone in such a situation might be tempted by such an offer.
[00:11:20] But this is not a uniquely Swedish situation; the world over, criminal gangs use children to carry out tasks for them, from carrying drugs to hiding weapons, and the offer of quick and easy money is as attractive to a boy in Stockholm as in São Paulo.
[00:11:41] So, what’s different about Sweden?
[00:11:44] Well, according to some commentators, this is a problem deeply linked to immigration. Until fairly recently, Sweden had a very generous immigration policy, and hundreds of thousands of people immigrated to the country, often from countries ravaged by war.
[00:12:04] Integrating these immigrants has not been easy, and there is no Swedish politician, to my knowledge, who says integration has been a resounding success; on the left, politicians admit that there is still a lot of work to do, and on the right, especially the further right, there are those who wish to paint immigrants as the source of all Sweden’s problems.
[00:12:30] On one level, life as an immigrant is easier in Sweden than in most countries. The state provides you with free healthcare, childcare, school and university, benefits if you are unable to find work, and housing if you need it. Unlike some countries, in Sweden, nobody should ever be forced to live in abject poverty, as the state will provide for you.
[00:12:58] But many immigrants report feeling that they are treated as second-class citizens. They live in ghettoised areas where few people speak Swedish, so they have limited chance to learn the language.
[00:13:13] They cannot find work, and do not feel like this will ever change. And it is these people’s children, typically, children who were born in Sweden, but to immigrant parents, who tend to be the ones picking up the weapons. They see their parents, uncles, aunties, and cousins, and don’t see any way out. This makes them easy targets for criminals.
[00:13:40] But, again, this is not a uniquely Swedish problem. Many other European countries have similar levels of immigration, similar problems with integration, and haven’t seen a consequent rise in gun violence.
[00:13:56] So, yes, it may be a factor, but we need to look at what else there may be.
[00:14:03] One thing that is more unique to Sweden is that it has a particularly forgiving justice system when it comes to children.
[00:14:12] Of course, in most countries, children are treated differently from adults, but Sweden is particularly lenient: children under the age of 15 cannot be tried in court, no matter what they do. Even between the ages of 15 and 17, prison is seen as an absolute last resort, and they are usually sent to social services.
[00:14:41] And it doesn’t stop there. Even if you’re 19 or 20, so legally an adult in most countries, the courts are still required to treat you as a “young person”. This means lighter sentences, no life imprisonment, and often, rehabilitation programmes instead of standard prison time.
[00:15:05] The idea behind all of this is simple, and in many ways admirable.
[00:15:11] The Swedish justice system believes that young people can change, that criminal behaviour as a child is often a sign of social problems, not of inherent evil.
[00:15:24] Poverty, unstable families, poor schooling, these aren’t a child’s fault, and it is these that push a child towards crime, so the argument goes.
[00:15:37] So the role of the state is to rehabilitate, not to punish.
[00:15:43] But there’s a problem.
[00:15:46] This lenient and forgiving system was designed for the occasional teenage troublemaker: the boy who steals a bike or gets into fights at school. It wasn’t designed for a generation of teenage hitmen.
[00:16:03] And gangs have quickly figured out that these lenient laws are a gift.
[00:16:10] They recruit children under the age of 15 precisely because they know those children cannot go to prison, so the children have less to fear.
[00:16:21] They’ll be back on the street within days, if not hours.
[00:16:26] For gang leaders, that makes these boys the perfect soldiers: disposable, fearless, and legally, almost untouchable.
[00:16:37] And so, a system built on compassion has become, unintentionally, a tool for exploitation.
[00:16:46] And there is another factor too, linked to immigration, but indirectly: after the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, Sweden welcomed tens of thousands of refugees from the Balkans.
[00:17:01] These were people fleeing brutal conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo, wars that had torn apart families, communities, and entire countries.
[00:17:14] Sweden opened its doors, as it has always done, and offered safety, housing, and the chance for refugees to rebuild their lives.
[00:17:24] But among the refugees were a minority of former soldiers, militia members, and people with links to organised crime.
[00:17:35] And after the war, the Balkan region was flooded with small arms, such as pistols, grenades, and automatic weapons.
[00:17:45] By some estimates, millions of unregistered weapons were circulating in the Balkans in the years after the conflict. In cupboards, in wardrobes, under the bed.
[00:17:57] And in the following decades, many of them would make their way into Sweden.
[00:18:04] And they still do, with one estimate suggesting that three new weapons arrive in Sweden every single day, and police often tracing the origins of firearms used in shootings back to the Balkans.
[00:18:21] This is a key reason why there are so many weapons in Sweden, compared to other Nordic countries.
[00:18:28] So, you have this array of different factors: an increasingly segmented criminal world willing to use lethal force, a pool of willing children, a lack of economic opportunities, a justice system based on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and enough weapons to form a small army.
[00:18:51] And the result, well, unfortunately, you can open the front page of any Swedish newspaper and see it almost every day.
[00:19:00] The question now is what to do about it.
[00:19:03] And this, as you might imagine, is the subject of great debate.
[00:19:09] Some believe the answer lies in getting tougher on crime.
[00:19:14] The Swedish government, which has shifted to the right after 2022, has promised what it calls “a paradigm shift” in how the country deals with crime.
[00:19:27] The Prime Minister has spoken about “breaking the gangs’ backs”, and his government has already introduced a series of measures that mark a sharp turn away from Sweden’s traditionally liberal approach.
[00:19:42] Among the most controversial proposals is to lower the age of criminal responsibility.
[00:19:49] Under the current law, as you heard, anyone under the age of 15 cannot be tried or sentenced.
[00:19:57] But under new proposals, prosecutors would be able to charge younger offenders for serious crimes, such as murder, attempted murder, or bombings, with some in government pushing for children as young as 13 to be tried as adults.
[00:20:16] The government has also introduced harsher penalties for crimes connected to gang networks, meaning that even being part of a criminal organisation could carry longer sentences.
[00:20:29] Police have also been given broader powers to intercept encrypted messages, use facial recognition technology, and conduct preventive searches, which allow them to stop and search people even if they’re not suspected of a specific crime.
[00:20:46] Now, critics say these measures have gone too far; they are the sort of things more commonly associated with countries like France or the UK, not famously liberal Sweden.
[00:20:59] The government, however, argues that the situation demands it; desperate times call for desperate measures. Sweden’s liberal justice system isn’t adequately equipped to deal with the level of criminality that exists today. This isn’t the time for philosophical debate about rehabilitation, so the argument goes; it’s a fight to restore order.
[00:21:24] But there is, of course, another camp.
[00:21:27] Many Swedes believe that these measures may address the symptoms of the violence, but not the root cause.
[00:21:36] Harsher punishments and police powers might make voters feel safer in the short term and put a bunch of young men behind bars, but in the long term, they aren’t really solving anything.
[00:21:51] Instead, they call for greater investment in schools, housing, and integration. In other words, tackling the reasons why these children end up in gangs in the first place, not punishing them after they’ve pulled the trigger.
[00:22:08] Using the carrot, not the stick.
[00:22:11] Now, the one thing I want to add here is my own perspective.
[00:22:17] I live in Sweden, and I often see scaremongering stories by foreign media outlets, often right-leaning ones, portraying the country as some extremely dangerous, crime-filled warzone, with immigrants as the culprits.
[00:22:35] Yes, it is frightening to think that this is happening close to where my family lives, and I certainly wish it were different.
[00:22:43] But this violence is predominantly gang on gang, and my experience so far is that cities in Sweden feel much safer than places like London or Paris. And pinning all of the blame on immigration is, in my opinion, a gross simplification of a complicated problem.
[00:23:07] To wrap things up, Sweden is a wonderful place, but it’s neither the socialist utopia nor hellhole it’s painted out to be.
[00:23:16] And, no matter their political persuasion, everyone in Sweden wants to return to a situation where shootings are not a daily occurrence, but the question of how to get there is far from resolved.
[00:23:33] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on Sweden’s Teenage Gangsters.
[00:23:39] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:23:42] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:23:46] Are you from Sweden, or have you visited Sweden? What are your thoughts on the issue, the root causes, and what can be done about it?
[00:23:54] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:24:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:24:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about something that might sound improbable: Swedish teenage gangsters.
[00:00:32] Over the past decade, Sweden has seen a rise in violent crime, with an increasing amount committed by children.
[00:00:41] And in this episode, we’ll explore why this is, whether it is as great a problem as some have made it out to be, and what the country is doing about it.
[00:00:53] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:00:59] Let me start this episode by painting you a picture. This isn’t an invented story; it’s true, it’s something that happened to me just a few weeks ago.
[00:01:11] It was around 6 o’clock in the afternoon. I had picked up my kids from their respective schools, and we’d been playing in the park with friends. Football, swings, hide and seek.
[00:01:25] On the way back home, one of my sons heard a helicopter flying overhead. He’d seen a helicopter before, but for this two-year-old, it was a pretty exciting sight for an otherwise uneventful Wednesday afternoon.
[00:01:42] It seemed to be hovering over our heads, but after finally managing to persuade him to wave goodbye to it, we set off on the short journey home.
[00:01:55] I didn’t think much more of it, but as we were eating dinner an hour or so afterwards, my son pointed out of the window. The helicopter was still there, circling.
[00:02:09] I had my suspicions about what this might mean, but I invented some excuse: perhaps someone had lost their teddy bear or something.
[00:02:19] After they had got to bed, I checked the news, and my suspicions were confirmed.
[00:02:27] Just around the time we had finished in the playground, a member of the public had made a grim discovery in a nearby car park.
[00:02:37] The lifeless bodies of two men.
[00:02:41] The police had been called, the area cordoned off, and the helicopters were not searching for a child’s lost teddy bear, but for a murderer, a murderer who may very well have been a child themself.
[00:02:58] Now, as of the time of recording this episode, the police haven’t released any further information about the case. They immediately announced that they suspected it was part of an ongoing turf war between feuding gangs in the north of the city, the city of Gothenburg, the second largest city in Sweden.
[00:03:20] The two men were well-known to the authorities, the police said.
[00:03:25] Nevertheless, the case was shocking. The area where they were found is a leafy, residential, and safe area; it’s not gang territory. The dead men had been left in a parked car in the car park of a neighbourhood supermarket, right next to a football club where hundreds of children were happily practising.
[00:03:51] It was shocking to me because I live just a few hundred metres away; my nearest supermarket, a place I often pass through with my kids, is that very supermarket.
[00:04:03] But to the Swedish police, unfortunately, this has become somewhat of a regular occurrence.
[00:04:11] In 2022, there were 391 recorded shootings - more than one a day.
[00:04:21] It’s not just guns; that same year, there were 149 recorded explosions, with everything from grenades being thrown through apartment windows to bombs being planted behind doors.
[00:04:37] And let’s remember, Sweden is a small country, a country of just over 10 million people.
[00:04:45] What this has meant is that it now has the grim title of the second-highest gun crime rate in Europe, with the per capita murder rate in Stockholm an astounding 30 times that of London.
[00:05:02] And to make matters even scarier, the perpetrators of this violence are not always grown men, seasoned criminals who have spent more time inside prison than out.
[00:05:16] They are often teenagers, young boys. Indeed, in 2022, almost half the suspects in gun-related murders were between the ages of 15 and 20.
[00:05:33] And shockingly, sometimes they are even younger. In early October, six people were shot in a town north of Stockholm. The shooter, according to police, was only 13 years old.
[00:05:50] So, what’s going on?
[00:05:53] To most people, the image they have of Sweden is one of beautiful lakes, stylish men and women with great hair and flawless English, IKEA furniture, not of violence and murder.
[00:06:07] Well, like any complex problem, there are differing viewpoints on the causes and, therefore, the solutions.
[00:06:16] What is unfortunately undeniable is that the situation is out of hand. Gun-related violence has been rising in Sweden over the past 20 years or so, bucking the trend of every other European country. Some years it has come down, and indeed it has come down slightly since 2022, but the overall trend is upwards.
[00:06:43] And the age of the perpetrators, those pulling the triggers, planting the bombs and throwing the grenades, has unfortunately been trending downwards; the killers have been getting younger.
[00:06:57] According to Brå, which is the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, there are several factors behind this.
[00:07:08] Firstly, the makeup of criminal gangs in Sweden has changed. Historically, they were more hierarchical, with a big boss controlling large parts of an area’s criminal activity.
[00:07:22] Starting in the early 2010s, however, it's become more regional, with smaller, more local gangs that exerted tighter control especially over an area’s drug market.
[00:07:36] These gangs also became more willing to use violence, and in particular, lethal force to resolve disputes.
[00:07:46] Previously, resorting to murder was a serious affair that might require approval from the upper echelons of the organisation; with smaller, more fragmented groups, lethal force often became the primary way to resolve a conflict, even ones that might previously have been resolved in non-violent ways, or at least, with non-lethal force.
[00:08:13] And from this emerged a new type of criminal: the teenage killer.
[00:08:20] To quote directly the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, “These individuals did not always have strong personal stakes in the disputes but were often recruited to carry out violent acts, driven by the promise of status and money. Compared to previous periods, there seems to have been a devaluation in the status of executing certain types of shootings, with younger individuals with limited experience from the criminal milieu taking in these tasks.”
[00:08:55] End quote.
[00:08:57] In other words, these young people, boys mainly, would carry out contracts on behalf of gangs, killing members of rival gangs, or even their families, for cash.
[00:09:10] In interviews, young people are often very open about what is offered to them, usually coming through encrypted messaging apps and even social media: €5,000 for shooting someone in the leg, €15,000 to kill.
[00:09:27] The offer is placed, a job accepted, and the child is then given the name and details of the target, and provided with a weapon to commit the deed, often with an apparent complete indifference to its consequences.
[00:09:45] In the case of the 13-year-old suspected of having shot six people in early October, his social worker had asked him where he was, because they suspected he might have got involved in the wrong circles.
[00:10:00] And he reportedly texted back with “check the news, hehe”.
[00:10:06] Now, why are kids getting drawn into the world of crime?
[00:10:11] Well, the primary motivation seems to be financial. Criminal gangs are not only offering large amounts of money, but also posting on social media about what this money brings: cars, designer clothes, and the latest electronics.
[00:10:29] And most of these teenage criminals are coming from worlds where this seems out of reach.
[00:10:37] Although the Swedish police doesn’t release statistics on the backgrounds of those charged with or suspected of crime–especially minors–the trend is that these children typically come from second-generation immigrant backgrounds, often with parents on low incomes.
[00:10:56] To these children, entering the criminal world offers an easy ticket to riches, one job, just an hour’s work, and you can get paid more than your entire family might make in a year.
[00:11:12] It is, on one level, unsurprising that someone in such a situation might be tempted by such an offer.
[00:11:20] But this is not a uniquely Swedish situation; the world over, criminal gangs use children to carry out tasks for them, from carrying drugs to hiding weapons, and the offer of quick and easy money is as attractive to a boy in Stockholm as in São Paulo.
[00:11:41] So, what’s different about Sweden?
[00:11:44] Well, according to some commentators, this is a problem deeply linked to immigration. Until fairly recently, Sweden had a very generous immigration policy, and hundreds of thousands of people immigrated to the country, often from countries ravaged by war.
[00:12:04] Integrating these immigrants has not been easy, and there is no Swedish politician, to my knowledge, who says integration has been a resounding success; on the left, politicians admit that there is still a lot of work to do, and on the right, especially the further right, there are those who wish to paint immigrants as the source of all Sweden’s problems.
[00:12:30] On one level, life as an immigrant is easier in Sweden than in most countries. The state provides you with free healthcare, childcare, school and university, benefits if you are unable to find work, and housing if you need it. Unlike some countries, in Sweden, nobody should ever be forced to live in abject poverty, as the state will provide for you.
[00:12:58] But many immigrants report feeling that they are treated as second-class citizens. They live in ghettoised areas where few people speak Swedish, so they have limited chance to learn the language.
[00:13:13] They cannot find work, and do not feel like this will ever change. And it is these people’s children, typically, children who were born in Sweden, but to immigrant parents, who tend to be the ones picking up the weapons. They see their parents, uncles, aunties, and cousins, and don’t see any way out. This makes them easy targets for criminals.
[00:13:40] But, again, this is not a uniquely Swedish problem. Many other European countries have similar levels of immigration, similar problems with integration, and haven’t seen a consequent rise in gun violence.
[00:13:56] So, yes, it may be a factor, but we need to look at what else there may be.
[00:14:03] One thing that is more unique to Sweden is that it has a particularly forgiving justice system when it comes to children.
[00:14:12] Of course, in most countries, children are treated differently from adults, but Sweden is particularly lenient: children under the age of 15 cannot be tried in court, no matter what they do. Even between the ages of 15 and 17, prison is seen as an absolute last resort, and they are usually sent to social services.
[00:14:41] And it doesn’t stop there. Even if you’re 19 or 20, so legally an adult in most countries, the courts are still required to treat you as a “young person”. This means lighter sentences, no life imprisonment, and often, rehabilitation programmes instead of standard prison time.
[00:15:05] The idea behind all of this is simple, and in many ways admirable.
[00:15:11] The Swedish justice system believes that young people can change, that criminal behaviour as a child is often a sign of social problems, not of inherent evil.
[00:15:24] Poverty, unstable families, poor schooling, these aren’t a child’s fault, and it is these that push a child towards crime, so the argument goes.
[00:15:37] So the role of the state is to rehabilitate, not to punish.
[00:15:43] But there’s a problem.
[00:15:46] This lenient and forgiving system was designed for the occasional teenage troublemaker: the boy who steals a bike or gets into fights at school. It wasn’t designed for a generation of teenage hitmen.
[00:16:03] And gangs have quickly figured out that these lenient laws are a gift.
[00:16:10] They recruit children under the age of 15 precisely because they know those children cannot go to prison, so the children have less to fear.
[00:16:21] They’ll be back on the street within days, if not hours.
[00:16:26] For gang leaders, that makes these boys the perfect soldiers: disposable, fearless, and legally, almost untouchable.
[00:16:37] And so, a system built on compassion has become, unintentionally, a tool for exploitation.
[00:16:46] And there is another factor too, linked to immigration, but indirectly: after the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s, Sweden welcomed tens of thousands of refugees from the Balkans.
[00:17:01] These were people fleeing brutal conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo, wars that had torn apart families, communities, and entire countries.
[00:17:14] Sweden opened its doors, as it has always done, and offered safety, housing, and the chance for refugees to rebuild their lives.
[00:17:24] But among the refugees were a minority of former soldiers, militia members, and people with links to organised crime.
[00:17:35] And after the war, the Balkan region was flooded with small arms, such as pistols, grenades, and automatic weapons.
[00:17:45] By some estimates, millions of unregistered weapons were circulating in the Balkans in the years after the conflict. In cupboards, in wardrobes, under the bed.
[00:17:57] And in the following decades, many of them would make their way into Sweden.
[00:18:04] And they still do, with one estimate suggesting that three new weapons arrive in Sweden every single day, and police often tracing the origins of firearms used in shootings back to the Balkans.
[00:18:21] This is a key reason why there are so many weapons in Sweden, compared to other Nordic countries.
[00:18:28] So, you have this array of different factors: an increasingly segmented criminal world willing to use lethal force, a pool of willing children, a lack of economic opportunities, a justice system based on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and enough weapons to form a small army.
[00:18:51] And the result, well, unfortunately, you can open the front page of any Swedish newspaper and see it almost every day.
[00:19:00] The question now is what to do about it.
[00:19:03] And this, as you might imagine, is the subject of great debate.
[00:19:09] Some believe the answer lies in getting tougher on crime.
[00:19:14] The Swedish government, which has shifted to the right after 2022, has promised what it calls “a paradigm shift” in how the country deals with crime.
[00:19:27] The Prime Minister has spoken about “breaking the gangs’ backs”, and his government has already introduced a series of measures that mark a sharp turn away from Sweden’s traditionally liberal approach.
[00:19:42] Among the most controversial proposals is to lower the age of criminal responsibility.
[00:19:49] Under the current law, as you heard, anyone under the age of 15 cannot be tried or sentenced.
[00:19:57] But under new proposals, prosecutors would be able to charge younger offenders for serious crimes, such as murder, attempted murder, or bombings, with some in government pushing for children as young as 13 to be tried as adults.
[00:20:16] The government has also introduced harsher penalties for crimes connected to gang networks, meaning that even being part of a criminal organisation could carry longer sentences.
[00:20:29] Police have also been given broader powers to intercept encrypted messages, use facial recognition technology, and conduct preventive searches, which allow them to stop and search people even if they’re not suspected of a specific crime.
[00:20:46] Now, critics say these measures have gone too far; they are the sort of things more commonly associated with countries like France or the UK, not famously liberal Sweden.
[00:20:59] The government, however, argues that the situation demands it; desperate times call for desperate measures. Sweden’s liberal justice system isn’t adequately equipped to deal with the level of criminality that exists today. This isn’t the time for philosophical debate about rehabilitation, so the argument goes; it’s a fight to restore order.
[00:21:24] But there is, of course, another camp.
[00:21:27] Many Swedes believe that these measures may address the symptoms of the violence, but not the root cause.
[00:21:36] Harsher punishments and police powers might make voters feel safer in the short term and put a bunch of young men behind bars, but in the long term, they aren’t really solving anything.
[00:21:51] Instead, they call for greater investment in schools, housing, and integration. In other words, tackling the reasons why these children end up in gangs in the first place, not punishing them after they’ve pulled the trigger.
[00:22:08] Using the carrot, not the stick.
[00:22:11] Now, the one thing I want to add here is my own perspective.
[00:22:17] I live in Sweden, and I often see scaremongering stories by foreign media outlets, often right-leaning ones, portraying the country as some extremely dangerous, crime-filled warzone, with immigrants as the culprits.
[00:22:35] Yes, it is frightening to think that this is happening close to where my family lives, and I certainly wish it were different.
[00:22:43] But this violence is predominantly gang on gang, and my experience so far is that cities in Sweden feel much safer than places like London or Paris. And pinning all of the blame on immigration is, in my opinion, a gross simplification of a complicated problem.
[00:23:07] To wrap things up, Sweden is a wonderful place, but it’s neither the socialist utopia nor hellhole it’s painted out to be.
[00:23:16] And, no matter their political persuasion, everyone in Sweden wants to return to a situation where shootings are not a daily occurrence, but the question of how to get there is far from resolved.
[00:23:33] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on Sweden’s Teenage Gangsters.
[00:23:39] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:23:42] As always, I would love to know what you thought of this episode.
[00:23:46] Are you from Sweden, or have you visited Sweden? What are your thoughts on the issue, the root causes, and what can be done about it?
[00:23:54] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:24:03] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:24:08] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
