Abstract
Geographically Sweden is one of the margin members of the European Union. Sweden is also rather sparsely populated with a total population of 9 millions. During the last decades every cohort of children/juveniles consist of approximately 100,000. Since the age of legal responsibility in Sweden is 15 years and special legislation still applies for juveniles until they reach 21 years, the juvenile population could be said to consist of around 600,000. It is a well-established fact that the number of young people who have been reported for committing a crime has increased dramatically since World War II. This is not unique to Sweden and is often the same elsewhere in Europe (Estrada, 1999a). It is not unusual to see this change as continuous, that young people are becoming “worse and worse”. An attitude like this obviously affects the measures that are involved in the development of juvenile crime. This report will present the measures against juvenile crime from a criminal (justice) policy perspective and highlight how this policy has changed over the past three decades. The report begins with a general background describing the history of the Swedish juvenile justice system. Thereafter the trends in juvenile delinquency1 are analysed and the responses to crimes that are taken by the Swedish juvenile system are described in more detail. Finally we discuss how the current trends can be understood.
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Notes
- 1.
The English concept “juvenile delinquency” has no direct equivalent in the Swedish language or in the Swedish legal system. Instead, in Sweden we usually speak of juvenile criminality, a concept which differs from juvenile delinquency in that it does not include so-called status offences, i.e., acts committed by juveniles which constitute a crime but are legal if they are committed by adults. The authorities' reactions in such cases have the character of social measures and are regulated by social legislation, not penal legislation. In this chapter the term juvenile delinquency is used synonymously with the Swedish concept of juvenile criminality and thus covers all acts which are subject to penal sanctions according to Swedish law.
- 2.
This section is taken from Estrada (1999b) where additional Swedish sources also are listed.
- 3.
The connection between the rate of crimes solved (the percentage of reported crimes that the police have solved) and the risk of discovery (the risk of a criminal being discovered and reported for a crime that was committed by him or her) is problematic. In essence, it can be said that the risk of discovery for the individual criminal has probably not decreased to the same degree as the percentage of crimes solved. This means that the calculations that have been made most likely overestimate the development.
- 4.
If certain minor offences such as thefts from school or the respondent's home, and fare dodging on public transport, are ignored, the proportion of youths reporting having committed one or more (non-minor) offences during last year stood at 61% in 1995 and 52% in 2001 (Ring, 2005).
- 5.
Hospital admission statistics are presented in such a way that the same person being admitted several times during the same year will be counted once for each admission. The figures for 1997 should be regarded with caution since there has been both a change in the classification system and a drop in the quality of reporting.
- 6.
A waiver of prosecution may be perceive as warning or conditional discharge and means that the guilty party will not be subjected to any further measures by the legal apparatus (on the condition that they do not commit any further offences) as a result of the act. However, the act will be considered a crime and will be recorded as such in the register of convicted persons. The prosecutor may issue a prosecution waiver in regard to less serious crimes but only if the suspect has admitted to the offence. In the absence of an admission of guilt, the matter must be tried by a court.
- 7.
The prosecutor may also discontinue a criminal investigation if the crime in question may be deemed to be insignificant in relation to another offence and if the costs of the investigation would assume unreasonable proportions, providing the sanction would not exceed a fine or a waiver of prosecution. In such cases however, the interests of other parties (e.g., those of the victim) may not be disregarded.
- 8.
According to Swedish law, exceptional cause is required before an individual aged between 15 and 17 may be sentenced to prison. The opportunities to sentence 18- to 20-year-olds to prison are also limited, although the legislation is somewhat less restrictive in this case and only reasonable cause is required.
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Sarnecki, J., Estrada, F. (2006). Keeping the Balance Between Humanism and Penal Punitivism: Recent Trends in Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice in Sweden. In: Junger-Tas, J., Decker, S.H. (eds) International Handbook of Juvenile Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4970-6_19
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