The government of Sweden is backing down on the controversial plans to allow 13-year-olds to be sentenced to prison for the most serious violent crimes after the Moderate Party said they would vote against it.
This marks a significant retreat from one of the government’s flagship proposals to tackle youth gang crime.
“Things are a bit uncertain in parliament, and that is why we have decided to act responsibly in this situation by making the decision this morning to withdraw this bill,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer told reporters.
The plan, which formed part of the Tidö Agreement with the Sweden Democrats, would have allowed children as young as 13 to be sentenced to prison for serious offences such as murder, attempted murder, aggravated bombings, and serious weapons crimes.
Strömmer had previously defended the measure as essential to stop criminal gangs exploiting very young teenagers, who currently cannot be prosecuted.
Sweden’s Government framed the rise of extreme youth criminality as an emergency situation.
However, intense opposition from police authorities, prosecutors, the prison service, and legal experts who warned that jailing young children could backfire and recruit even younger offenders has forced the Moderates to drop the proposal.
The party now says it will focus instead on strengthening alternative sanctions and improving social services for young offenders.
The climbdown represents a notable victory for critics who argued that the plan was too blunt an instrument and risked violating Sweden’s commitments under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It also highlights growing tensions within the centre-right coalition over how far to go with tougher law-and-order policies.
Sweden has experienced a sharp rise in gang-related violence involving minors in recent years, with criminal networks increasingly using children under 15 who are currently below the age of criminal responsibility to carry out shootings, bombings and drug running.
Official figures show a sharp rise in serious offending linked to children under 15.
In 2025 alone, 52 individuals below that age were involved in murder or attempted murder cases that reached court.
Drug-related crime remains the primary driver, fuelling the recruitment pipeline and sustaining the networks’ operations through extortion, arms trafficking and narcotics distribution
Official reports and police assessments indicate that perpetrators and victims in these gang-related incidents are disproportionately of foreign background or from migrant communities.
The government has already passed legislation allowing 15- to 17-year-olds to serve prison sentences in special youth units.
The Swedish Social Democrats, who are in opposition, have officially supported lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years (on a temporary/trial basis) for serious crimes.
Twenty-three innocent bystanders have been killed and 30 others wounded in gang-related shootings in Sweden over the past three years, according to police statistics released on Monday that have laid bare the Nordic country’s struggle to rein in a wave of violent crime rooted in…
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