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Up to and including April this year, 24 people under the age of 18 had been detained for serious weapons offenses in Sweden. That is five times as many as during the same period last year according to statistics from the police, reports Sweden’s Radio Ekot.
The figure for the whole of 2022 was 31 people.
The number of people detained for serious weapons offenses also increases most specifically in the group of children under 18 years of age. The increase occurs in all police regions except in the northern region and is greatest in Stockholm.
In addition to gang criminals increasingly letting young people handle weapons, the increase is also due to the fact that it has become more common for the justice system to place young people in custody pending trial, says Sven Granath, criminologist and researcher at the police authority, to Ekot.
– Those who previously might have ended up with social services even though they were suspected of serious crimes.