STOCKHOLM What do you want to be when you grow up?
A former gang criminal Viktor Grewen I think this is the most important question you can ask a young person.
– No one asked me that back in the day, he says now at the age of 25.
Asking can make a young person think about their own choices and find what motivates them in life.
– No one has answered that they want to be a criminal, Grewe points out.
He wouldn’t have wanted to either.
Born in 1999, at the age of 13, Grewe drifted into a life where robberies, violence and convictions were commonplace.
The same is happening to more and more young people in Sweden.
The Swedish Crime Prevention Council the report published in July according to, younger people are always involved in fatal shootings. Most likely, the perpetrator and the victim are young boys or men.
Almost as often, a knife is used as a weapon in an act of violence that leads to death.
Grewe has two convictions, one of which was for aggravated assault related to the stabbing. The gang often traveled armed, the book says.
Now 25-year-old Grewe sits in the premises of the KRIS support organization in Stockholm and talks about his experience in front of the camera. He has written a book about his gang days. Its name is Avhopparen. In Finnish, the word means deserter or deserter.
– In no way do I want to romanticize the life I lived. In the book I try to talk a lot about consequences. Everything you do or choose has more or less consequences, says Grewe.
Our family didn’t talk about feelings.
In his book, Grewe goes through his story from childhood. He talks about his epilepsy, his attention deficit disorder and the feeling of unfairness in his new school. About my mother falling ill with cancer and how the family was no longer interested in her whereabouts.
Everything is marked by the feeling that the boy has no place in the world – until he discovers violence and crime.
This is how he describes what he felt at the time:
The first time Grewe used violence was at school. In the book, he tells how a girl threw a banana at him – and how the feeling of shame and embarrassment made him angry.
– I believe it was because I didn’t get help on how to express myself. Our family didn’t talk about feelings. I didn’t know how I would have released the feeling of anger, he says.
An unexpected fact can also be found on the pages of the book published in September. I have always felt like a Finno-Swede, Grewe writes.
His grandmother was a Finnish war child who returned to Finland but moved back to Sweden as an adult. Grewe’s father was born in Sweden, but the family has cherished ties to Pietarsaari.
Grewe is fascinated by the stories told by his grandmother about Finland and his great-grandfather who died in the war. This was also mixed with disappointment: according to the grandmother, Grewe could not become a soldier due to his diagnoses.
– I am proud of what my relatives did in the war, he says.
Crimes with friends
Grewe fought his own battles on the streets of Märsta and Upplands Väsby. It’s about the agglomeration north of Stockholm, where Grewe’s gang spent time and committed crimes. He himself calls the group a group or a clique.
News about Swedish gangs often talks about vast criminal networks that are at war with each other.
Grewe’s experience was different: friends who grew up together started committing crimes together.
– None of those I met thought they were in a “network” but in their own group with their friends, he describes.
Youth gangs, on the other hand, are groups of friends who commit crimes. That’s what Grewe belonged to. They specialized in robberies and burglaries.
– Many said that we were old-fashioned, because few people commit robberies anymore.
I got goosebumps from the feeling that Brawling and robberies evoked.
However, there is a connection between gangs and criminal networks, says Brå in his report. Young people who have already committed crimes are precisely those who are recruited by the networks.
Often a young person is attracted by the example of another, slightly older young person. The Swedish police have been worried that some of the children ask questions themselves after the gigs.
Grewe still thinks that a child doesn’t want to become a criminal by default. For him, it’s about what kind of adult examples the child has around him and who he grows up to admire.
Brå points out that more and more 12- to 15-year-olds are involved in criminal networks. They are bound by debt, threats and violence. Sometimes an entire youth gang joins a criminal network at once.
This did not happen to Grewe, but he turned in the other direction.
The last gig changed everything
At the age of 19, Grewe spent a couple of months in prison for aggravated assault. The sentence was reduced because he was still young.
After being released from prison, he began to wonder if there was something else in life after all. The feeling was confirmed when Grewe’s group kidnapped the man to extort money from him.
Grewe calls the event “the last crime”. It was a turning point.
– Money had always been a side issue for me. I got goosebumps from the emotions that fighting and robberies evoked. The last time I didn’t feel the same anymore, he says.
He remembered that he had previously received a tip from a support organization and contacted KRIS. Now, three years later, the roles have reversed, and Grewe is the one helping the others.
– I was 22 years old and completely burnt out. Now I see 18-year-olds in the same situation.
Grewe stresses that everyone’s experiences are different, but one thing unites many.
– They have no hope for the future. They don’t see that they can possibly succeed. They don’t think they can get a job, and their self-confidence is really low.
He always starts conversations about what the young person needs at that particular moment. The need can be very concrete, such as help with social services, looking for a job or writing a CV. The important thing is to find something else to do instead of crimes.
– I try to give back what I never got.
Grewe says he doesn’t just want to blame others. The perpetrator is responsible for his actions.
– But it would have helped if an adult had been there to support and push forward, he says.
– At that age, you don’t understand it any better. It was only later that I began to understand that the things I was doing were indeed wrong. I had lived that way for so long that it had become normal.
“I feel a lot of guilt”
The crimes that Grewe has committed hurt many. After them, it has not been easy to calm his conscience, but Grewe says he has moved on. He regularly visits a psychologist.
– I feel a lot of guilt. If I could do certain things over again, I would do them differently.
The first months after leaving the gang were the hardest. If there was a shortage of money, the old solution came to mind.
Nowadays, the criminal life is no longer attractive at all, he says. Grewe has a spouse and a small son. He keeps in touch with one of his old friends, who has also left the old group.
Grewe says that in order to let go, it’s important to resolve old disputes and take care of debts, if any.
Before the book was published, Grewe went through with his old friends what he could and couldn’t write. I can’t talk about everything, he says. Too little time has passed, and the crimes are not statute-barred.
What does he answer now to the question of who wants to be big?
– I want to help others. That’s my thing, the one I found.