The Swedish government is preparing to introduce sweeping reforms to its juvenile justice system, allowing children as young as 15 to be sentenced to prison rather than placed in state-run youth care homes.
The plan, due to be unveiled by Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer in the coming days, follows mounting concern over the country’s spiralling gang violence and the increasing use of minors in shootings and bombings.
Currently, the main sanction for offenders under 18 is closed youth care, overseen by the National Board of Institutional Care (Sis). But the system has been plagued by scandals, with youth homes widely criticised as “nurseries for crime.”
Under the new proposal, closed youth care will be scrapped altogether, with the Prison and Probation Service (Kriminalvården) assuming responsibility for young offenders.
From mid-2026, offenders aged 15 to 18 convicted of serious crimes such as murder, armed robbery, or bomb attacks will serve their sentences in dedicated juvenile prison wards.
The government insists that the new facilities will differ significantly from adult prisons: inmates will be required to attend school, maintain contact with their families, and have structured rehabilitation programmes. In extreme cases, where there is a high risk of violence or escape, minors may be placed in high-security prisons.
The reform comes against a backdrop of unprecedented gang violence. Stockholm alone has seen dozens of shootings this year, while nationwide bomb attacks more than doubled—reaching 317 incidents—in 2024. Children as young as 12 are being recruited as ‘child soldiers’ to carry out contract killings and plant explosives.
In September, the government also announced plans to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 13 for serious offences, in a five-year trial period. Officials say this is necessary to break criminal networks’ practice of exploiting children below the current legal threshold.
The right-wing Sweden Democrats, who back the reforms, welcomed the decision to end the Sis model. In a statement, the party said imported gang violence was spreading into ever-younger age groups, with criminal networks recruiting 11- and 12-year-olds, arming 13- and 14-year-olds with guns and explosives, and using 15- and 16-year-olds as gunmen.
“A central measure to protect society from dangerous individuals is the introduction of special youth prisons,” the party declared, adding that the abolition of closed youth care and the creation of dedicated juvenile prisons will take effect on July 1, 2026.
Crime and violence will surely be one of the main themes in next year’s election campaign, and the centre-right government wants to show it can respond effectively to gang violence with tougher laws.
