The killer was only 14 and had lived in youth homes as a ward of the authorities since he was eight.
A year ago, a gang helped the boy escape, put him up in a hotel and gave him cannabis, food and new clothes. Six days later, gang members told him it was time to repay them for their kindness. They had a job for him.
Together with another youth, the boy, who as a juvenile cannot be identified, shot dead a 33-year-old Hells Angels biker. He was convicted by a court which described the case as a gangland contract killing.
As he was too young to be sentenced, he was handed back to social services and sent to another youth home.
Sweden has long prided itself on one of the world’s most generous social safety nets, with a state that looks after vulnerable people at all stages of life.
But these days it also has another distinction: by far the highest per capita rate of gun violence in the EU. Last year 55 people were shot dead in 363 separate shootings in a country of just 10 million people. By comparison, there were just six fatal shootings in the three other Nordic countries - Norway, Finland and Denmark - combined.
daaamn this gang applied the same old receipt : The french word for murderer is “assassin” that comes from the haschischins sect (XIe century). The “old men from the mountain” (leader) gave young mens a taste of paradise (cannabis, food, shelter, maybe girls) then sent them to kill someone.
Isnt this basically the plot of Alamut?
Assassin’s Creed says what?
Exactly
So he killed a dude And they sent him back to the youth home? Are they just stupid or what?
The kid is a victim.
And in Sweden what in the US would be called a “juvenile detention center” would fall under the term of “youth home”. He wasn’t returned to the same one.
I don’t think they’re exactly leaving him unguarded, being underage, there isn’t another type of facility suited for legally incarcerating him. These facilities essentially double as juvie and orphanages.
Mixing kids who are simply in government care with ones that are violent, was never a good idea though. These two systems should be separate, because it’s now turning the former into the latter.
According to accounts for this story from eight sources including a former gang member, several youth home workers, prosecutors and criminologists, the homes have turned into recruiting grounds for gangs, who use them to enlist killers too young to be jailed.
Gangs have essentially found a loophole for legal murder. Get a child to do it.
They’re the ones masterminding this shit. It’s not like these actual children, with government rooves over their heads, are taking on contract killing to make ends meet.
Mixing kids who are simply in government care with ones that are violent, was never a good idea though.
That’s the issue here. There’s a huge difference between the kids in state care because they are orphaned and the kids who get sent to juvenile detention centers or even what we call in the US “alternative schooling.”
Not as big a difference as you think there is. Both are children needing love, acceptance, guidance and healing from massive traumas you can’t even begin to imagine.
Ok but the government seems to have let it happen.
Yeah, mixing violent youths with kids who just don’t have families seems to have consequences.
I disagree with the kid being a victim though. Even a 5 year old knows and understands what death is.
Yeah.
Kill that guy for us, or we’ll kill you, you owe us, sorta requires understanding death.
You think these kids take the “deal” knowing where it leads? Even some adults are easy to manipulate… so a fourteen-year-old?
I’d agree that some teen that kills of their own volition isn’t innocent… But there’s a literal gang involved that is actively grooming kids for murder.
As for the government letting it happen, agreed. Modern politics, legislation, and government executive branches address problems at a snails pace. Often actively causing them because politicians refuse to enact laws based on what is known, rather than what they feel.
Kinda like you, feeling like the victimhood of this actual child shouldn’t be acknowledged.
An attempt to address this with such a tainted perspective surely wouldn’t cause problems. /S
But are they not warned about this exact scenario? They definitely should be.
If the govt knows that happens then they should warn them says they gave em weed and an apartment building. If you warned the kids about that they would know “Hey if you accept that you’re going to have to kill someone”
You really can’t see how a child can fall through the cracks of a fucked government care system and fall in with people who would take advantage of them?
Just warn all the kids off strangers, no way some won’t hear it, ignore it, or literally do the opposite of what they’re told for stupid childish reasons.
Brilliant thinking my friend, lets just tell all our kids not to get kidnapped, human trafficking, solved!
And before you get semantic on me, manipulating a child into coming with you against their own interests even as it is then not taking them against their will, is still kidnapping.
Removed by mod
That’s less than a non-response. Self-inflicted sabotage of your own credibility.
Openly advertising your inability to understand why you disagree well enough to make others comprehend your stance with actual sentences that mean things.
So you try to pretend that a witty remark counts for something.
If you ever genuinely tried good-faith discussion, you’d see how little sense your position makes as you’d struggle to put together arguments that actually convince anyone.
Obviously this person shouldn’t be walking free, and needs serious rehabilitation.
But the same way adult ex-cons who end up back in prison in the US within months of release due to a fucked justice system, are victims, this literal child groomed into a tool to enact violence at the behest of others, is even moreso.
It’s the system that’s the problem. It was built for a society with a very homogenous and pacifist culture profile. That society no longer exists.
The majority in Sweden is going through a rather rude awakening right now and our systems are going to break a lot whilst our politicians struggle to bring them in line with our new reality.
Not every nation follows America’s hardline view of kids and crime.
There’s a whole world between American style brutal sentencing and whatever nonsense Sweden is doing. Neither seem to be working
It all has to with with money, ie: if you invest in proper care for the kids = it costs more than just warehousing/condemning them to the bare minimum.
I was more thinking of what to do with underage murderers and the sort
See I hear you except when it becomes full on straight up murder.
And the other commenter talked about how those homes (more like facilities I have learned) the kid is in are recruitments from local gangs to get kids to kill people and go unjailed.
Maybe they shouldn’t take America’s hard-line view on kids and crime but I’d say the soft view they are using now isn’t working very well.
And so what this kid grows up into an adult and then just gets to go back into the world, having killed someone who was innocent because a gang told him too?
Sounds like its a great policy.
Kids need love, acceptance and guidance from adults who are capable of that. If they don’t get that from those who should be giving it, they are open to abuse from those who will use and abuse them.
Those kids aren’t being recruited to murder anyone in the beginning. They’re being given the things they need, then they’re being manipulated to believe they owe their lives to the ones who gave it, and must do what they’re told to repay the debt.
Kids don’t have adult brains to think through the consequences of their choices. And the adults in charge of them, specifically politicians and other idjits who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about them most of the time, are failing those kids at every turn.
Sounds like that gang is doing exactly what countries do, except they’re smaller and therefore wrong while the country is right. It’s all relative to the size of your steeple.
I dunno about you but the state that I live in has never asked me to go kill hells angels because they gave me some social care money at one point.
It works like that in the US! I had to sign up for the draft to exist, and they can ask me to kill at any point!
I didnt have to sign up since its automatic and required for all males where I am from. But still, my country hasnt and will not ask me to go kill hels angles in other countries.
No, they’ll ask you to kill people in other countries.
They havent done that either. And at the moment it looks quite improbable for them to do so.
What are you smoking? Yes they have. All the time. Welcome to Earth. We have war for oil and cows.
I’m smoking weed and not killing people in other countries.
I must have missed the call up for service. Along with the rest of the country.
Neither the country nor the gang are picking up literally everyone. Your anecdote is invalid.
My country is picking nobody though
Pffft no way, sweden doesn’t have gun crime because only american laws can do a gun crime, impossible without it. Those swedes don’t know how to build anything and there isn’t a single machine shop or black market dealer anywhere outside of the US!
Hang on I’m being passed an update…
It seems that machine shops actually exist everywhere and bad people can indeed get things illegally, or even legally if they haven’t been caught being bad yet. Man who’da thunk it? I could’ve sworn that “if we had gun laws like yurop” it would solve all our problems 600,000,000 unregistered guns be damned.
As he was too young to be sentenced
Check it out, the same logic that let Cruz walk free on the over 40 calls made about him before he shot up Parkland. Maybe charging murderous children is actually a good way to keep them from buying guns as adults which is much harder with a record in America, I can only imagine the same would apply to swedes, and then whatever senior members will have to get guns illegally (which tbh isn’t that hard but at least you can say you tried.)
Sweden, which is currently experiencing an outbreak of gum violence, has 62 fatal shootings in 2022. To put that in perspective, adjusted for population, the equivalent would be 2000 shootings in the states.
Actual number of fatal, non-suicide shootings in the states? 20000.
Can you Yanks just piss the fuck off. There is zero need to make this about you. 62 fatal shootings is a a tragedy with fighting against
Did you reply to the wrong comment?
Difference being nobody is going around claiming the US is perfect. You ever talk to a european? They have an inability to admit anything bad happens there, generally, and if it did it was merica’s fault of course.
They have an inability to admit anything bad happens there
Don’t know which Europeans you’ve been talking to, but I live in Europe and we certainly have a lot of complaints to go around.
A lot of them seem to be that way, likely terminally online ones of course.
You seem cool though!
We get like that around Americans, trying to teach you how to complain about your own country. For some reason, you’re not receptive to that kindness.
Oh I complain about the US a lot, as does everyone here on lemmy and everyone I know IRL, but europeens think they can feel superior for being little middle of the road countries the size of Michigan and forget we’re the size of the whole ass EU meaning that’s the correct comparison, which your “superiority” just doesn’t cover. Sure, NL may be fine, just try to be a black guy in the wrong berlin neighborhood though, I’ve heard some interesting stories about the “totally not nazi” police there. I also hear France is becoming Nazis, and sweden has a lot of gun crime and the occasional grenade attack, we don’t even have those in America lol, certainly sounds like we all have enough problems, but nope, you idiots have to pretend you’re better because deep down you know you’ll never be. Oh well.
I know I know the US totally compares well in terms of police violence and prisoners per capita. To North Korea. It also compares well in terms of gang violence – to Haiti or Mexico.
Meanwhile, Germans consider it a national embarrassment that the Swiss and Japanese have better train systems. All a matter of perspective.
Oh no, plenty bad happens here. Just that when comparing to the problems the US has… Yeah, it’s a good reminder of how well everything works over here, despite the problems.
Of course, plenty of good happens here too, it’s just that it doesn’t fit the “if it bleeds it leads” business model so you never hear about it. Some areas here are just as safe as some areas of europe, some areas of europe are just as unsafe as some areas here.
This may surprise you to learn, but the US is comparable to the size of the entire EU, and as a result there are similar variances in safety between the two.
Er, I mean, US GOOD EUROPE BAD. Did I fill my role correctly there after that silly nuance break?
The US is overall a shithole masquerading as a first world country, only on the basis that the US is lucky enough to have had Europe use the dollar to rebuild after WWII. You’d have to squint incredibly hard to find any place comparable to Europe in the US, and then you’d still be stuck with car centric neighbourhoods and healthcare that’ll put you in a life debt for stubbing your toe.
Blah blah blah tribalism is good.
Tldr
Oh hey guys, I found the redneck.
No sunburn here, but I am tired of europeens’ unearned superiority complex.
There’s nothing unearned about it. :)
Exactly what I mean lol, delusions of grandeur are abundant on your continent.
They’re not delusions if things are actually better here.
You keep thinking that. In fact it’s so bad over here no europeens should come over.
