Response to interpellation 2025/26:117 on women's involvement in gang environments

Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! Anna Wallentheim has asked me what measures I intend to take to ensure that the work against gang crime integrates a gender equality perspective so that women and girls are not rendered invisible.

Knowledge of women's and girls' participation in criminal networks has previously been limited. Women and girls have often primarily been identified as victims, which has resulted in their actions in criminal environments not having been highlighted and clarified to a sufficient extent.

In the recently published situation report on active gang criminals in Sweden, the Swedish Police Authority assesses that the number of active gang criminals in Sweden amounts to approximately 17,500 persons. Of these, 6 percent are assessed to be women. At the same time, approximately 50,000 persons are assessed to have a connection to the active core, and in this broader group, the Swedish Police Authority assesses that the proportion of women amounts to 23 percent. Overall, the authority therefore estimates that it concerns over 12,500 women who are active in or connected to criminal gangs.

To increase knowledge in the area, the government has tasked the Crime Prevention Council with studying which crimes and activities tend to be carried out by women and girls in criminal networks. The assignment also included studying women's and girls' situation and vulnerability to violence. The assignment was reported in October and provides enhanced knowledge on, among other things, women's roles and conditions in criminal networks as well as the importance of increased detection to counter the involvement of women and girls in criminal network environments.

A lack of knowledge and prejudices regarding women's and girls' participation in crime risk leading to them neither being identified as criminal actors nor receiving the help they need to be able to leave crime behind. Actors who work with support for defectors need to be able to identify situations and carry out interventions to a greater extent when women and girls are involved in organized crime.

In light of this, the government tasked the police, the Prison and Probation Service, the National Board for Institutional Care, and the National Board of Health and Welfare in October last year with adapting the work regarding support for defectors to circumstances that may exist when women and girls are involved in organized crime. Within the framework of the assignment, the authorities have updated their support materials with information on the importance of also paying attention to women and girls within organized crime. The support materials will also be updated as knowledge of women's and girls' roles within the criminal networks increases.

I also want to mention that the Children's Ombudsman has published a research overview on girls and young women in criminal gangs, as well as reports on children's and young people's experiences of different forms of violence during upbringing. The authority has there particularly highlighted differences between the genders and the connection to honor-related violence and oppression.

There are differences in vulnerability, and the Children's Ombudsman notes that there are deficiencies in knowledge regarding how, for example, honor-related structures can lead to crime. There is also a need for more knowledge on how criminal networks exploit children for sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Against that background, the Children's Ombudsman was commissioned in May this year to investigate the connection between honor-related violence and oppression and gang crime, as well as how criminal networks exploit children for sexual exploitation and human trafficking for various purposes.

It is important that the issue of the participation and vulnerability of women and girls within gang criminal environments is illuminated from all sides. The assignment to the Children's Ombudsman is to be reported in March next year. As I said, we have also recently received the Police Authority's updated situational picture of the number of active gang criminals as well as the Crime Prevention Council's study of women and girls in criminal environments. I do not, of course, rule out further measures to increase knowledge about this issue and thereby obtain a basis to further strengthen the effectiveness and accuracy of the measures implemented against this crime.

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Anna Wallentheim (S)

Mr. Speaker! It is not the first time I stand here in the chamber together with the Minister for Justice to discuss women's role in gang crime, but it is a question that unfortunately is becoming increasingly relevant and acute.

I would like to start by thanking the Minister for Justice for the answer. I appreciate that the Minister shares the view that women's role in gang crime is both underestimated and rendered invisible. It is also positive that the Swedish Police Authority now actually reports figures that show the extent. The figures show, just as the Minister mentioned, that over 12,500 women are active in or connected to gang environments. It confirms what we may have sensed for a long time, namely that women's participation in organized crime is significantly greater than we have known.

Now that we have the knowledge, we must nevertheless act, Mr. Speaker. There is a risk that the government's work will stop at just knowledge and mapping. To order reports, update support materials, wait, and give more government assignments, I mean, can be important and something we need to do, but I also want to see even more concrete measures to help women away from gang crime.

That the police, the Prison and Probation Service, Sis, and the National Board of Health and Welfare have been tasked with updating the support material is an important step, but women in gang environments need more than just papers and guidelines. They also need real ways out. We are talking about girls and women who often live under threats. They often have children and debts and live under psychological pressure. This requires specialized exit programs, protected housing, and coordinated social interventions, not just documents.

I also want to point out that the Children's Ombudsman's mandate regarding honor-related violence and exploitation is incredibly important but does not cover the entire problem. Not all women in gang environments participate solely because of honor or because of trafficking; many women have unfortunately grown up in socially vulnerable areas with violence, substance abuse, and mental illness around them, and they are unfortunately recruited early – often through relationships – and become trapped in debt or dependency. It is that group that we still do not reach.

In some way, my questions to the Minister remain. How does the government ensure that the knowledge that now exists is also put into practice in the police's work, in the social services' methods, and in the Prison and Probation Service's treatment programs? How does the government ensure that the situation of women and girls does not become a special annex in the work against crime? It is only when the gender equality perspective is built into all levels, from the preventive work to the exit programs, that we can actually say that we are truly combating gang crime.

I hear that the Minister does not rule out further measures. The Minister and I agree on much in this area, and I am grateful for that. However, I would like to encourage that the measures are not delayed, because while we talk about gathering more knowledge, there are women who are already being exploited, threatened, and forced to commit crimes for the benefit of others. They deserve to be seen – not in the next report but in the decisions and priorities made here and now.

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! I thank Anna Wallentheim for the opportunity to discuss this extremely important issue today and also the previous times when we have spoken about it.

I take note of what was the question, namely what we do to ensure that the work against gang crime also, so to speak, integrates a perspective where women and girls in these environments are not made invisible, whether regarding their vulnerability or regarding their actions. The first important step to achieve this is, of course, to make this visible.

All the assignments we have spoken about – both the Swedish Police Authority's mapping of what network crime looks like in this regard as well as the assignment to the Crime Prevention Council, which has specifically targeted this issue, as well as the assignments to the Children's Ombudsman – are assignments that we have made decisions on in light of the fact that that knowledge has largely been lacking in the system. It was not the case that we stepped into the Government Offices and that there were amounts of knowledge and heaps of documentation there; on the contrary, one could say that this was a blind spot that we have now addressed through these assignments.

We have, therefore, put the question on the table in order to clearly illuminate the issue from slightly different starting points and perspectives. Now we have this basis. If I say that the problem raised in the question, that is, the invisibility, is now solved, it does not mean that we should not continue to deepen our knowledge and continuously update our situational pictures. But the problem is, in any case, being addressed in a systematic way, which we have not seen before, and I think that is excellent.

When it comes to the measures, it is of course the case that we are already undertaking measures aimed at meeting the problem. When it concerns, for example, defection programs and that they should be able to be targeted towards girls and women in a much better way than before, the government can, so to speak, not itself host the defection program in Rosenbad. It must instead take place out in the field, with authorities and other actors who can offer paths to defection.

That assignment and work is underway, and I see it as an extraordinarily important measure in order to be able to offer ways out for those women and girls who can thus move in the borderland between being active actors, or support actors, in different ways, and themselves being exposed to crime. Thanks to the underlying data, we know, for example, that it is not uncommon for younger women in the networks to both commit crimes themselves and, in a very cynical and brutal way, be used as a means of payment, for example by being used for sexual services when debts are settled or other transactions are carried out within the framework of the networks.

To see the entire problem where the girls and women are both actors, that is, perpetrators, and victims, is therefore an incredibly central matter, not least when one is to work with the defector assignment.

Among other important tools to protect these people, the women, from their perpetrators, I would like to highlight the tightened restraining order legislation, which entered into force this summer. It will be able to provide such protection against perpetrators in a completely different way than before. For example, the protection shall not only cover the residence where the victim is located but, for instance, also an entire municipality.

One should also be able to implement electronic surveillance against individuals who harass a girl or woman. And it should not be done as a last resort, when all other measures have been exhausted, but as a primary measure if the threat justifies it.

I want to mention two important parts. One is the secrecy legislation, regarding prevention. We know that information about this regarding the threat situation, the harassment, and the underlying social problems exists in the system. But the fact that there is no possibility to share that information has so far significantly worsened the conditions for conducting active preventive work.

I request to return to further measures in the next contribution.

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Anna Wallentheim (S)

Mr. Speaker! These are issues that I care about incredibly much, both because we heard that women are being exploited as means and can almost be sold as sex slaves between the gangs and that we are receiving more and more reports of women's actual participation in gang crime.

Equality issues are close to my heart. That is why it is important for me to say, especially when we have students sitting here in the gallery and listening, that interpellation debates are not always about arguing with the government. Sometimes one just wants to highlight an issue that is important. Here we can together point out measures that are important and that the government is working on, but also those that we in the opposition are pushing for, so that we do not miss important perspectives.

I believe that the minister and I can agree that this requires us to broaden our understanding of what gang crime actually is. The efforts of politicians and authorities have for many years – I admit that this also applies when my party sat in government – been based on an image that the gangs consist of young men and that we therefore must work preventatively and have measures for the men but not for the women.

We have primarily seen women as victims or as relatives of criminals. But clear reports now show that that image is no longer accurate. Research and reports, from among others the Swedish Crime Prevention Council, show that women's involvement in criminal networks often occurs in the shadow of the men. They launder money, they can pass on information, and they can hide weapons or function as logistical support. But there are also women who are driving the criminal schemes themselves.

Mr. Speaker! When girls are recruited early into destructive environments or exploited for men's crimes, it is not just about crime fighting. It is also about equality, it is about safety, and it is about women's right not to be drawn into the logic of violence.

All parties in the Swedish Riksdag want to break gang crime. The government is clear that they want to break gang crime. This is good and important for the continued work. But the question is how the Minister for Justice and the government ensure that they truly integrate a gender equality perspective in this work, so that women and girls do not continue to be made invisible, and that they continue to find opportunities to protect them and give them the opportunity to leave.

It can be a matter of governance, resources, and analyses having to take into account gender differences when it comes to both roles and risks. We know, after all, that when the equality perspective is missing, we miss half of the problem. If we risk leaving women, both those who are vulnerable and those who are involved, without support and protection, society has failed.

I am grateful that the Minister is here today and has clearly accounted for what the government is doing to ensure that women and girls do not fall into the shadows and what assignments have been given. But I am still afraid that it is mostly men we will be talking about and that in the fight against organized crime, one chooses to look primarily at the men.

Do not let the struggle for women's participation disappear in the noise of the young men! If we do not see the women and girls now, it may be too late, and the risk is then that we will see the same problems among young women as we see today among young men.

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! I thank you again for the opportunity to discuss these extremely important issues today.

First, I want to talk about this matter regarding men and women. There is a reality if one looks at the active core, which the police assess to be 17,500 people. That 6 percent of that group are women reasonably means that 94 percent of it are men. I do not say this at all as an objection to the approach for this discussion. But if we only look at how the problem looks, it becomes clear that this is to a large extent a problem driven by men, even to such an extent that over 90 percent of the active members in this core are men. If we then look at the broader circle around the active core, we see that the proportion of women becomes larger, closer to 25 percent. Then we are, admittedly, talking about a large volume.

I am saying all this only as background to understand the problem correctly. As said, it excludes none of what Anna Wallentheim takes up in her interpellation. I also think that it is reflected in my answers.

We have a strong interest in working effectively at the individual level and at the group level to be able to address this issue. I think it is excellent that we now have a much clearer picture of the problem, as a result of the government assignments that we have made decisions on and where reporting has now come from a number of different sources. We have spoken about the Crime Prevention Council, the police's situational assessment, the Children's Ombudsman and other things.

How do we then use this basis? I touched upon it earlier. The interpellor has themselves raised the issue of defection activities several times. It is important to emphasize that the work with such an explicit mandate, which very clearly points out the problems regarding especially girls and women, is already underway.

I can point to another part, which I have not mentioned earlier: the work with the transition to youth prisons. It is an incredibly important matter in order to protect society against serious crime in a much better way, but also to be able to provide content that has some kind of possibility of breaking these patterns. In today's system, where the state youth care has had that task, 90 percent of the young people with links to the gangs who have been sentenced to closed youth care in serious crime recidivate.

The transition to youth prisons and special youth wards in our institutions is an important matter. One can work in a completely different way with education, treatment, and other recidivism-preventing activities to achieve completely different results than we have achieved so far regarding the recidivism-preventing work towards this group.

To get to today's topic, I should say that an explicit part of that assignment concerns precisely how one can adapt that activity for girls. We know that in total, it does not involve particularly many individuals. The challenge then becomes even greater to be able to adapt the activity, which will not be particularly large overall, so that it creates both protection and security for girls who end up in detention. The content of the activity must also be able to meet precisely their needs and give them tools to emerge as better people on the other side.

I feel that we are using this knowledge in different ways to adapt both measures and activities in a much clearer and more explicit way than before to a reality where girls and women also occur in increasingly higher proportions.

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Anna Wallentheim (S)

Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer!

We have both previously noted that women's roles in gang environments are more complex than many believe. It is not just about women being in the background. They are actually both active in crime and victims of crime – sometimes simultaneously. Precisely because of that, we need a gender equality perspective in all work concerning the gangs.

I believe the minister is aware that I know the figures still clearly show that it primarily concerns young men. But I do not want to see the proportion of women increase. It is important to introduce measures now to prevent it.

I am also fully aware that the closed youth care we have is not working at all. It is, of course, frightening that over 90 percent reoffend. I would, however, like to highlight once again that the crime prevention work is incredibly important here. It is not just about what is done within the criminal justice system, and I know that when it comes to schools, social services and so on, the responsibility falls on other ministers in the government. But that is how we will break it.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to mention that it is not enough to say that the laws apply equally to everyone. In practice, we see systems that do not meet women in the same way as men. Social services often lack methods for working with girls in criminal networks. The police have limited knowledge of how women's roles differ from men's. The correctional services have long focused on male inmates, even though the number of women is increasing. Their backgrounds are often characterized by violence, dependency, and exploitation.

Clear political leadership is required. Missions are needed for agencies such as Brå, the Police Authority, and the Prison and Probation Service to monitor the developments. Interventions are also needed to strengthen civil society's work for women. It is not about belittling men's responsibility – on the contrary. But we must realize that an effective crime policy must also be seen from an equality perspective, because we cannot turn a blind eye to how women are drawn into and exploited in criminal environments.

(Applause)

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Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)

Mr. Speaker! I thank Anna Wallentheim for a very fine summary of the entire issue and for a forward-looking argument about what must be done as we look ahead. It is a reality that we have an enormous problem with organized crime in our society, not least with the recruitment of children and young people into the criminal networks. It is an accelerating problem, not least due to the digitalization of the recruitment.

It is a reality that our society's resilience has proven to be extraordinarily weak. I take full and complete responsibility for the part of the toolbox that I control. But when we broaden the perspective, I think it is palpable that the preventive work to prevent young girls and boys from being drawn into criminal networks is far too weak. A major challenge ahead is not only to get new legislation in place but also to achieve the major shift required from all actors in our society to truly be able to use the legislation to break the development at a much earlier stage. Not least, it is about information sharing and about using data in a much more offensive way than we have done until now.

Regarding this specific question, I am, as I said, very pleased that we now have a much better picture of the problem through the targeted government mandates. I completely agree regarding the need for steering. It is also for that reason we have given many direct, clear government mandates aimed at different parts of the prevention and repression regarding this issue.

More will need to be done moving forward. If we do not succeed in pushing back this crime and choking off the recruitment to the criminal networks, regardless of whether we are talking about young boys or girls, men or women, our free and open society is at risk in the long run. It is a development that we under no circumstances can accept.

The interpellations debate was hereby concluded.

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