After the violent summer, a large number of minors were arrested and later detained. In June and July alone, 75 young people between the ages of 15 and 17 started a period of detention.
Two of them are a 16-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl who were imprisoned at the end of July after a shooting incident in Södertälje. Another is a 15-year-old boy who has been charged with complicity in the murder of a teenage boy in Bagarmossen in Stockholm earlier this month.
Usually, young people are only taken into custody for very serious offences, such as suspicion of murder, attempted murder, explosion, serious weapons offenses and the like.
Teenagers increasingly get access to illegal firearms and are drawn into gang-ordered violence, says criminologist Sen Granath of the Stockholm police. He says the police are also succeeding in arresting more people after acts of violence and that the courts have become more willing to put young suspects in custody instead of handing them over to social services.
– Even if the group with risk factors does not really get that much bigger, it is of course serious that the children are drawn into this serious crime, says Granath.
In July, there were an average of 83 minors in custody in Sweden, in May and June the average was 100.
– As an authority, we do not have long experience of dealing with so many minors, so it is a challenge. We have children who have been sitting here for several months, says inspector Aso Cåzade at the detention center in Sollentuna.
#record #number #minors #custody #Sweden
2024-08-18 09:45:55
