Graver crime creeps down in age: "Must take it seriously"

Crime goes down the ages and gets worse. In recent years, among other things, robberies against children have increased in Uppsala.

The municipality's youth team - in collaboration with schools and police, among others - is working to break the trend.

- We definitely see this trend and have to take it seriously, we have to react. We have therefore accelerated our work in the field. It has to be where it happens - before it happens - and be able to work preventively, says Hilde Wiberg, head of the youth group.

The youth group has around twenty employees and works outreach to build relationships with children and young people who are at risk of falling into crime.

"It's about finding the kids who start climbing the crime stairs and putting in efforts early before they are recruited for more serious crime," she says and continues:

- It is very important not to see things in black and white but to see individual individuals instead. It may be that this child himself has been subjected to crime and wants to commit a revenge reaction, or the child thinks that society has failed.

What are the risk factors for children to commit this type of crime?

- The children we meet are in environments where the absence of adults is very large. Criminal gangs can both attract and signify belonging. One of our important roles is therefore to create a non-negative affiliation.

In the clip above, Hilde Wiberg tells more and the work of the youth group.