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A brutal war between rival gangs has escalated in Sweden. The situation is the price paid for decades of political mismanagement in settlement and drug policy.
In the Stockholm area alone, there have been five violent crimes committed by members of various drug clans in just a few hours. A man is shot. “Gang crime is escalating,” warned Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on Saturday on SVT.
The government, meanwhile, is itself under attack. Politicians and civil servants accuse her of “total failure”. Sweden has the most rigid drug legislation in all of Europe. SRF correspondent Bruno Kaufmann says about this apparent contradiction: “Swedish drug laws are strict. But there is a lack of personnel to enforce this. And instead, the drug trade is highly lucrative.”
Other accusations from critics aim at seemingly uncontrolled immigration. In fact, some of the clan members come from immigrant families. Kaufmann counters this: “Apart from a few weeks in autumn 2015 at the height of the refugee crisis, there can be no talk of uncontrolled immigration in Sweden.”
Instead, the SRF correspondent cites the settlement policy of the 1960s and 1970s as the reason for the rampant gang violence: “Isolated concrete settlements were pounded out of the ground on the green meadows around the big cities. Today they hold a lot of social explosive power. »
In Sweden, the consequences of decades of political mismanagement are evident in settlement and drug policies.
The settlement policy may also explain why the clan members are getting younger and sometimes even minors. In the concrete suburbs of the big cities, there are few prospects for young people. But Kaufmann sees another reason why the perpetrators are getting younger and younger: “Swedish legislation exempts juvenile offenders from harsh sentences. The gangs take advantage of this, using younger and younger members in drug trafficking and fighting rival gangs.”
The judiciary and the police make a weak impression
The police have announced a bundle of measures to get the explosive situation under control again. 190 officials from other parts of the country are sent to Stockholm to provide support. And Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer wants to expand the options for wiretapping suspected perpetrators.
SRF correspondent Kaufmann is skeptical: Apart from the fact that some of the measures under consideration are problematic under the rule of law, he warns that the police do not have enough and well-distributed staff. «The Swedish police have been literally weakly saved and centralized at the same time in recent years. In many places in the country there is hardly any police presence.”
In this context, quite a few critical voices attack the Prime Minister personally – who expressly promised in October 2022 to get the gang violence under control. According to Kaufmann, the criticism of Kristersson’s personnel falls short: “The problems are diverse and complex and some of them date back a long time. Governments with various political ramifications have consistently had a hard time with gang crime.”
Irrespective of this, Kaufmann does not want to release the government and its boss Ulf Kristersson from responsibility: “The police are overwhelmed. And the government still washes its hands in innocence because it has only been in office for a few months.”