Following a trend in embracing Danish legislation, a Swedish committee (SOU 2024:30) presented its considerations on i.a. the so-called Youth Crime Boards in May 2024. With some adjustments to national legislation, the proposal says that the Danish model should be adapted and implemented in Sweden within a few years. The Youth Crime Boards have been pointed out as an example of a place where the not always very clear boundaries between punishing and rehabilitating interventions becomes tangible.
In a Nordic context, the societal approach towards juvenile offenders have historically focused on treatment and rehabilitation rather than punishment. In Sweden, the social services have had the prime responsibility for societal reactions on juvenile crimes. As juvenile delinquency is seen as an ever-increasing problem, the social law-efforts have been deemed insufficient by politicians and more emphasis has been placed on measures of criminal justice.
The ongoing criminal policy debate has largely come to revolve around juvenile delinquency. A clearly harsher view is to be taken on handling juvenile offenders within – and outside of – the criminal justice system. However, the main dichotomy is not new: separate ideologies – punishment on the one hand, treatment on the other – collide when different authorities deal with juvenile offenders. It is not always clear which one of the systems that should take presence in matters of legislation or sentencing. Legal consequences for juvenile offenders constitute thus a complex field of tension, in between legal areas with often diametrically opposed goals and strategies.
Overlaps where punishment, care and treatment intertwine and interfere with each other in a way that sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish between different types of intervention. Disparate interests must be accommodated within the framework of one and the same set of regulations. A lasting feeling is that young offenders often end up in-between different systems.
When criminal and social justice efforts become increasingly difficult to distinguish from each other, the legal uncertainty for the individual increases. The complex penalty structure would probably benefit from being reviewed.
Returning to the committee proposal, that I wrote about initially: Although the committee clearly states that the Youth Crime Boards are not to be seen as part of the criminal justice system, it is inevitable that such comparisons easily could be made. Mandatory measures, that could be decided on without consent from the juvenile in question by a Board led by a judge sounds very similar to a criminal court procedure and as such it must include and respect fundamental human rights for the juvenile. Still, parallel processes formally within the criminal justice system will be able to take part and the complexity of the issue will not decrease. A bit more clarity would have been preferable in sorting out in which system juvenile offenders should be handled.
Background
The blog post is based on my presentation at the NSfK Research Seminar in Åhus 14.5 2024 and the essay ‘Caught between a rock and a hard place’ – några aktuella åtgärder mot omyndiga lagöverträdare i Sverige, in NTfK 3/2023, 401-414. Further references can be found in the essay.
About the author
Andreas Anderberg is senior lecturer/assistant professor in criminal law at the Department of Law, University of Gothenburg. His research interests lie mainly within crime policy, criminalization and legisprudence. Anderberg has i.a. been co-editor of the volume Teori och politik: straffrätt i omvandling (Iustus, 2022).
Contact: andreas.anderberg@law.gu.se