The Swedish government has announced plans to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 14 after dropping plans to lock up violent offenders as young as 13 in special prison units.
Earlier this month, Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer announced plans to cut the age from 15 to 13, but on June 11, he said there was not enough support in parliament for that and that he had agreed to compromise at 14.
“We are going to propose that the age of criminal responsibility should be cut to 14 instead of 13 years old,” Strommer told reporters.
Currently, anyone under 15 who is suspected of having committed a serious crime is sent to a youth home, run by social services, and cannot be sentenced to a custodial sentence in prison.
Strommer said in 2025 that more than 50 children under 15 were suspected of murder or attempted murder.
There has been a surge in gang crime and drug-related violence in Sweden over the past 20 years, and it now has one of the highest rates of shootings and bombings in Europe, dozens of which were carried out by minors.
Thousands of Gang Members
Swedish police estimate there are 17,500 active gang members and around 50,000 who are loosely associated with them.
Magnus Lindgren, a former police chief in Uppsala County and current secretary-general of the Safer Sweden Foundation, told The Epoch Times last year that there were about 15,000 “very dangerous criminals” in Sweden, who were divided evenly into biker gangs, football hooligans, and criminals from around 60 high-crime neighborhoods.
Organized crime gangs, such as the Foxtrot Network, use social media to recruit teenagers and children as young as 11 to commit acts of violence, including bombings and murders.
The recruiters, who operate anonymously, post adverts in special groups on social media apps and offer money through banking apps.
The EU’s law enforcement agency, Europol, launched Operational Taskforce GRIMM in April 2025 to target so-called “violence-as-a-service,” which it said often used “young perpetrators.”
After the 2022 elections, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the center-right Moderates, formed a government that includes the Christian Democrats and Liberals, but has the crucial support of the right-wing Sweden Democrats, who campaigned against immigration and in favor of tougher criminal justice measures.
Kristersson’s government has overhauled Sweden’s criminal justice system, giving the police more powers and introducing tougher sentences for violent crime.
Under the new plans, children aged 14 who are convicted of violent criminal offenses will be sent to special prison units.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child recommends that the age of criminal responsibility should be no lower than 14, which is the average across the European Union.
Swedish organized crime networks are also operating in Denmark, Norway, and Finland, and also in the Netherlands and Belgium, which have the two biggest ports—Rotterdam and Antwerp—for importing narcotics, hidden in cargo.
On March 12, 2025, sanctions were imposed on Rawa Majid, the alleged leader of the Foxtrot Network, one of Sweden’s largest organized crime groups, by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
OFAC stated that the gang trafficked illegal drugs and carried out attacks on Israelis and Jews in Europe on behalf of the Iranian government.
Norwegian Teen on Trial
A Norwegian teenager, Johannes Natland, was arrested in Huddersfield, England, in March 2025 and is currently on trial in London, where he has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to murder on behalf of the Foxtrot Network.
Natland, who was 18 at the time, was found in possession of two handguns and 17 bullets and has admitted to possessing firearms.
Giving evidence in court this week, Natland said he had been offered 25,000 euros ($29,000) to kill someone but said he planned to shoot himself in the foot to get out of having to do it, the BBC reported.
“I thought if I was to say no, I would be in serious danger, they’re going to hurt my family,” Natland said. “I thought they’d kill me.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Natland’s barrister, Paul Hynes KC, for comment but did not receive a response.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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