Over the past few years, Sweden has been confronting a form of violence that no longer fits traditional categories of “youth crime.” What authorities, courts, and researchers now document more closely resembles outsourced violence: a system in which children are deliberately operationalised as low-risk, high-impact tools within organised criminal networks.

Recent court cases and investigative reporting describe children, some as young as 11, recruited to commit murders, transport weapons, and carry out grenade attacks. These acts are not impulsive but follow a deliberate sequence of recruitment, tasking, payment, and reuse, coordinated almost entirely online through encrypted platforms and aliases that shield those in charge.

In many legal systems, children below the age of criminal responsibility cannot be prosecuted, while older minors are placed in youth custodial settings rather than adult prisons. Organised criminal groups exploit these legal boundaries, using children to carry out violence while those who plan and profit from it minimise their own exposure to risk and prosecution.

What Is Happening on the Ground

  • Investigations by police, prosecutors, and journalists show that so-called “murder contracts” are circulated on encrypted and social media platforms, framed as gamified “missions” or “challenges.” Posts advertise ready-made attacks with payment attached, without names or direct contact.
  • Between January and September 2025, at least 127 children under 15 were suspects in murder-related cases, many with no prior link to organised crime. Their common factor is vulnerability rather than ideology or gang loyalty, often stemming from unstable or broken homes and state‑run housing facilities.
  • Recruitment appeals not only to money but also to identity, recognition, and belonging. In court transcripts, a 15-year-old described his recruiter as “the father he never had,” offering loyalty in return; the recruiter replied: “Loyalty and violence.”

Psychological Mechanisms

The psychological dynamics mirror other forms of child exploitation, including child soldiers. Children are groomed gradually, often online before any criminal request. Desensitisation is key: exposure to graphic violence and drugs like Tramadol blunts fear, making violence abstract, then normalised, then valorised, with social media providing audience and instant validation.

In documented cases, vulnerable youths are drawn in by promises of money, status, adrenaline, or belonging, often with no prior involvement in criminal networks. This pattern departs from the classic trajectory in which criminal identity develops gradually through repeated justice system contact, with violent acts here serving as the initial point of entry rather than a later outcome.

A New “Attacker” Profile

The profile of the “attacker” has changed: the old model, marginalised young men with criminal histories, clear gang affiliations, and predictable escalation, no longer holds. Today’s attackers can be 13-year-olds with no criminal record, recruited online, following instructions from people they have never met, in conflicts they do not understand. This makes prevention far more complex, as traditional indicators (known offenders, gangs, or hotspots) are no longer sufficient.

From System Failure to Child Blame?nbsp;

Historically, the use of children in violence has been understood as a failure of the system, not a moral failure of the child. The child soldier framework emphasises coercion, vulnerability, and exploitation.

In Sweden, however, a subtle shift is emerging. Faced with public fear and political pressure, the debate is increasingly framed around lowering the age of criminal responsibility, rather than dismantling the recruitment pipeline itself. The Swedish government has proposed lowering the age to 13 for serious crimes.

Experts warn that this risks misdiagnosing the problem. Developmental neuroscience is clear: children’s capacity for impulse control, risk assessment, and long-term reasoning is still forming well into adolescence. Lowering the age may satisfy a demand for accountability, but it does little to disrupt the underlying economics and psychology of recruitment. Worse, it may reinforce the gang narrative: the child is already lost; use them.

What Authorities and Experts Are Saying

Police and prosecutors increasingly describe the situation as organised exploitation, not juvenile delinquency. Criminologists stress that focusing on punishment misses the strategic logic of the gangs. Former gang members confirm that young recruits rarely expect long lives; many assume they will be dead before 25.

What experts advocate instead is a multi-layered response:

  • Early detection of grooming patterns online.
  • Rapid intervention in state-run housing and schools.
  • Disruption of digital recruitment channels.
  • Targeting adult coordinators rather than child executors.
  • Strengthening exit pathways before violence occurs.

The Broader Implication

Sweden’s crisis reveals more than gang violence: it shows how modern criminal ecosystems outpace legal and social frameworks, and how childhood itself is being redefined under pressure. The age of criminal responsibility was built for a different reality, assuming impulsive, individual acts by children, not their deployment as instruments in organised, remote, and commercially structured violence.

Treating this as a child problem risks repeating the same mistake made elsewhere, criminalising victims while leaving the architects untouched. The question is not simply whether the age of criminal responsibility should change, but whether states can adapt quickly enough to a reality where the profile of violence has outgrown the profile of the law.