Hired by criminals Swedish "child soldiers" carry out jobs in Denmark

There is a disturbing trend in Scandinavia's gangster world. Swedish teenagers are being sent to Denmark to do jobs for gangs there. What is this phenomenon all about?

Shots are fired in the busy Copenhagen district of Nørrebro. In Kolding, 80 kilometers from the German border, a man is shot in the leg. On a Monday afternoon, a young man is shot in a jewelry store. A hand grenade explodes in a kiosk. All this happened recently in Denmark within the space of a week. The alleged perpetrators: young Swedes, some of them only 16 years old.

Danish Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard called the Swedish teenagers "child soldiers" who are hired by Danish criminals to commit crimes for them. Following the recent wave of violence that seems to be spilling over from Sweden, Denmark tightened controls at the border with its Scandinavian neighbor and sent Danish police officers to Sweden.

Minister warns of "Swedish conditions" in Denmark

In an interview with the DR television station, Hummelgaard said that he was devoting all his time to preventing "Swedish conditions" in Denmark. He was alluding to the gang violence that has been rampant in Sweden for decades, whose perpetrators and victims are increasingly minors, some of them aged 14 and under.

Manne Gerell, a criminologist at Malmö University in southern Sweden, explains that Swedish gangs have their roots in disadvantaged neighborhoods with a high proportion of residents with an immigrant background. "In the beginning, it was simply juvenile delinquency. But then these young people grew up, began to act more strategically and build stronger criminal networks," Gerell told the German Press Agency. Over the course of a few decades, this developed into a huge violence problem in Sweden.

Danish gangsters buy services from Swedish colleagues

The fact that Swedish gangs are also active in Denmark is nothing new, says the criminologist. But what is new, according to him, is the modus operandi. Previously, when Swedish criminals carried out attacks in Denmark, they were usually conflicts between enemy gangs. The new development - Swedish youths attacking Danes - is a kind of service that Danish gangsters buy from their Swedish colleagues, explained Gerell.

According to Gerell, a business model has developed in Sweden in which criminals join forces for individual projects: "There is usually a project manager who accepts an assignment. "We'll put a bomb there" or "We'll shoot this person." Then they organize one or two shooters. They organize someone who can get guns and someone who can drive the shooters to the scene. And when they're done, the group no longer exists." The Swedish gangsters are now said to have exported this business model to Denmark.

There is a simple reason why the criminal team leaders recruit Swedish teenagers for their tasks: "They are cheap and dispensable," says Gerell. They are of no value to the gang bosses. They don't care if the young people are arrested, says the criminologist. And there are many young people in Sweden who are available for such tasks. Most young people are either interested in status, money or a sense of belonging.

Danish gangster milieu increasingly brutalized

According to the Danish police, the latest attacks in Denmark are linked to a conflict between two criminal gangs. But why don't the Danish gangsters simply use local teenagers for their jobs? Sociologist Aydin Soei explains that there simply aren't enough so-called soldiers in Denmark because the country's youth crime rate is historically low.

The reason for this is preventative measures that have been taken in disadvantaged neighborhoods since the beginning of the noughties: Homework help, careers advice, club work. "We try to integrate young people into healthy communities so that they don't seek 'subcultural recognition', as I call it, in destructive gang communities," Soei told the German press agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

There is also an unwritten rule in Danish gang culture that says you don't use children for such hard crimes, says Soei. "The fact that Danish gangs are now recruiting Swedish children is, among other things, a sign that the Danish gang environment has become more brutalized. It has become more violent and they shoot to kill rather than just to mark their territory," says the sociologist.

Countries do not want to stand idly by

Sweden has failed when it comes to youth crime, says criminologist Gerell. "Sweden must do more to prevent children from being drawn into these environments." But the Danish authorities also have homework to do, says Gerell: "For example, how can they stop Danish criminals hiring Swedish criminals?"

A first step could be increased official and political cooperation between the Scandinavian neighbors. At a meeting in Copenhagen, the countries' justice ministers - Hummelgaard and his Swedish counterpart Gunnar Strömmer - agreed to work more closely together in the fight against gangs, for example by exchanging more information. They also want to take stronger action against the use of digital channels by organized crime to recruit children and young people. Will they succeed? That remains to be seen.