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Sierra Leone, Chad, Uganda, Somalia.
These are countries where rebel groups and government forces have used child soldiers. They were recruited through coercion or threats, or they were so badly off that they felt they had no other choice.
Why children? They are easily brainwashed. And poorly paid. They are also often perceived by the enemy as particularly fearsome, more ruthless and unpredictable.
When the report about child soldiers was made public, it sparked outrage.
In recent years Criminal gangs in Sweden have started using children for contract killings. The climb is avalanche-like.
But unlike their African counterparts, Swedish gang leaders do not have to use threats or violence when recruiting. Here, kids have voluntarily started signing up for Signal to “jap” a stranger and earn money for an iPhone 16 or an ugly teddy suit.
You can think about that for a few rounds.
But there seems to be, strangely, greater outrage at the government’s proposal to lower the criminal justice age to thirteen, or as it is popularly known, “putting children in prison”.
That the victims of The targeted rampages by child soldiers in suburban squares and hair salons often seem to play a minor role. Likewise, the imprisoned thirteen-year-olds receive a ninety percent reduction in sentences, that only serious criminals are considered – and not shoplifters, as one might think – and that you only have to look in the Netherlands and Belgium to find a legal minimum age of twelve. (Ten in the UK.)
Nor do the harshest critics claim that the law is intended as a temporary solution to a desperate situation and that in five years we will be back at the fifteen-year limit.
Is it all a question of semantics?
If you listen “Children in Prison” imagines children locked in a basement with bread and water, sharing a cell with some dynamite Harry.
Not that they are decisively disarmed, removed from their “yapping” environment and provided with fixed routines, homework help and psychological support.
For fun, let’s play with the idea that the Left Party will get its own majority after the next election and that it can implement everything it voted for without hindrance
The most common argument in the storm of criticism is that the government did not listen to all the “strong consultation bodies” that saw the proposal. And that’s interesting. A political scientist recently told P1 that it is a good Swedish tradition to let the various bodies leave their fingerprints on the bill. But the government, like its predecessors, is increasingly breaking with tradition.
Let’s have fun willing to toy with the idea that the Left Party will have its own majority after the next election and that it will be able to implement without hindrance everything it voted for – free public transport, free glasses and all sorts of things, and all the goodies will be financed by squeezing everyone with “huge million-dollar incomes”, or as Nooshi Dadgostar put it in a recent debate.
Presumably all of the serious referral centers would dismiss the objections. Is Prime Minister Dadgostar obliged to correct himself accordingly? Hobble back to his group and water down his proposals to the point where they sound like nonsense?
So what do we do about general elections? Shouldn’t we save time and money by firing all politicians and letting the relevant bodies argue about how the country should be run?
Of course I don’t know how the Police Union, the Correctional Service, the Law Society and the other “experts” responded when asked to comment on this bill. But it’s not impossible that they suppressed a sigh when they realized it would be so much more work.
Maybe the same printed mood as at the parents’ meeting when the teacher said we need two more who can keep up with halls, otherwise we have to cancel.
There is silence under the neon lights, everyone is studying their cuticles or staring inscrutably out the window, the frowns show that it sounds great, but these days are very thick for me…
Yes, it can sweat. What if the law has no effect? Or whether there are scandalous revelations in Mission Review? The safest thing to do is to do nothing. Or suggest “other measures”.
