The government’s investigator proposes reduced criminal justice age for serious crimes.
A proposal that receives harsh criticism from lawyer Kristofer Stahre.
“The risk is that you push down the crime in the ages and that the gang hires 12-13 year olds,” he says on News Day.
On Tuesday, the government’s investigator Gunnel Lindberg came up with the proposal to lower the criminal justice age to 14 years, instead of 15 as it is today. This applicable crime that has a minimum sentence of four years in prison and for trials, preparation and stamping for such crimes.
Kristofer Stahre, lawyer, sees several risks with the proposal.
– The concept has been tested by our neighboring country Denmark, where they lowered to 14 years, the effect was that crime increased, so the age was raised again. I am afraid that the same mistake will be repeated in Sweden.
Risk: The crimes go down in ages
Kristofer Stahre believes that the serious crimes will instead be carried out by even younger people.
-The risk is that you depress the crime in the ages and that the criminal gangs use 12-13 year olds instead of fourteen-year-olds when lowering the criminal age.
“The victims do not want to have a harder time”
One background to the new proposal is to provide crime victims. Kristofer Stahre, who sometimes represents crime victims, does not believe that those who are exposed necessarily want to see younger persons being punished.
– It is also a mistake, the government does not seem to meet victims. What my clients are looking for is not retaliation, they want to know what has happened and that a person who has committed an act should tell you what happened and is responsible for it, but not that you should take a harder time.