Two explosions, one in Huddinge and one in Jordbro, woke worried residents early Monday morning – and what happened is by no means unique in Sweden 2023.
The explosions were number 134 and 135 this year, which means that the night black record from 2019 is now broken.
The number of fatal shootings is also increasing, with September being the deadliest month ever, and Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer (M) takes a serious view of the development.
– It’s dark, it’s terrible and it’s nothing we can’t live with in a decent society. Now the entire social mobilization is required to push back this crime and reverse the trend, he says.
Among countries not at war, only Mexico has more explosions, according to criminologist Ardavan Khoshnood.
Main focus right now
Often both the perpetrator and the victim are children in Sweden. The government and the judiciary are therefore now putting a lot of focus on stopping the recruitment of minors into the criminal gangs.
In a new report, which was presented on Monday, the Police Agency stated that it had identified around 232 network criminal children aged 14 or younger in the country.
– It is a concretization of an image that we have seen for a long time. How serious crime pushes itself further down the ages and that there is a cynical recruitment or insocialization in these networks, says Strömmer.
The new proposals that were presented are mainly about a more structured and deepened cooperation between the police, social services, schools, correctional services and health care.
The goal is to reduce the gap between different actors – and reach the children before it’s too late.
– Nobody wants to belong to a society as it looks today, as it has become. We all want to help stop it and break it. It is extremely important, says police chief Carin Götblad about the new report and the wave of violence sweeping Sweden.