Abstract
Sweden can on the one hand be recognized as a socially stable country, with an active welfare state which aims to redistribute resources between different groups of people and attain high levels of social cohesion. It has also a long-standing tradition of preventative social work. On the other hand, Sweden is a country currently in transition with tensions between social groups arising as a consequence of globalization, migration, and urbanization. In this chapter, approaches to prevention and intervention with troublesome youth groups in Sweden are discussed from the perspective of how traditional approaches built on consensus and ideals of collaboration meet and respond to the perceived new phenomenon of street gangs, which perhaps challenges implicit ideas of how this kind of work should be done. The historical and cultural background to the development of prevention and intervention approaches is outlined in order to explain what kinds of responses have been developed and suggest why they have developed the way they have. Drawing on three empirical research projects in Gothenburg, Sweden, we examine more closely the central aspects of a Swedish approach based on collaborative values and multi-agency consensus. The strengths and weaknesses of “Case Sweden” are interesting, it is argued, not just on their own merits but also to understand the role of cultural context in developing and delivering interventions for troublesome youth groups.
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Notes
- 1.
We refer to gangs here within the wider notion of social disturbances. This is because current political and operational discussions about gangs in Sweden also occur within the broader notion of tackling social disturbances.
- 2.
Names of places refer to districts in Stockholm.
- 3.
Swedish Teachers Journal.
- 4.
We are of course well aware that there is no such thing as American elephants. The point being that the USA by and large also does not have a proliferation of the kind of street gangs most well represented in the mainstream American movie industry, an observation reflected in the title of the first Eurogang volume, “The Eurogang Paradox” (Klein et al. 2001).
- 5.
Only up until February 28th 2015.
- 6.
We draw on three empirical studies: (1) a 5-year long research project evaluating Young & Safe in Gothenburg (Forkby 2008); (2) a study of involvement in, the character of and exit from street gangs in Gothenburg (Forkby and Liljeholm Hansson 2011); and (3) an evaluation of the SSPF model in Gothenburg (Turner et al. 2015). “Young & Safe” and “SSPF” are explained later in the chapter. All three studies were conducted at the Research and Development Unit, The Gothenburg Regional Association of Local Authorities (FoU i Väst/GR).
- 7.
This is despite the fact that lethal violence, for example, in 2014, was worse in both Stockholm and Malmö (Sweden’s two other large cities) than in Gothenburg (Swedish Crime Prevention Council 2015).
- 8.
In Swedish, gang criminality is just one word: gängkriminalitet.
- 9.
City districts in Sweden’s larger cities are primarily autonomous in terms of delivery of school, social, and youth leisure services, with the rule of law being the key steering principle for national governance.
- 10.
Twelve to eighteen year olds.
- 11.
There are, for example, a number of policy and practice documents concerning SSP in Denmark, but no formal outcome evaluations.
- 12.
After an administrative reorganization, the number of city districts changed from 21 to 10.
- 13.
Youth leisure services were not included this time. We speculate that this may in part be based on implicit cultural values of which agencies are viewed as having responsibility but also power (tools, knowledge, and legal mandate) to address the youth gang problem.
- 14.
In short, the Pulling Levers model is a “carrot and stick” approach with among other things increased police surveillance of the person and/or group’s activities and a threat of maximum possible prosecution with removal of assets. This is combined with positive offers from a range of community services, such as employment, educational, and social services. Often, the entire gang is “called in” together along with their families or other close relations and offered an ultimatum. For a full description, see Kennedy (2011).
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Forkby, T., Turner, R. (2016). Collaboration as Usual? The Swedish Approach to Prevention and Intervention with Troublesome Youth Groups. In: Maxson, C., Esbensen, FA. (eds) Gang Transitions and Transformations in an International Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29602-9_14
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