The “parallel society” of Swedish gangs

11 min readMay 2, 2023

Sweden ranks 116th of 193 countries in the Global Organised Crime Index. It has a reputation as a safe and developed country, a stable democracy and a champion of gender and social equality. Yet a closer look at life in Sweden’s cities will give you a quite different picture. In this episode you’ll learn about Sweden’s growing gang problem and its links to structural inequality in the country.

Listen to the podcast in English here and in Italian here.

Street fighting in Sweden

Stockholm, Jan. 2, 2023. It is late at night and in the suburb of Grimsta, 15 km northwest of the Swedish capital, all is silent. Residents enjoy the last hours of sleep before the sun rises on the first Monday of the year. No one is out on the cold and frosty streets. Almost no one.

At 3 a.m., a loud explosion destroys the entrance to a residential building, jolting its residents awake. Shortly afterward, the same scene occurs in Bagarmossen, another suburban town, this time southeast of Stockholm. Fortunately, there are no casualties nor injured people, but the damage to the Grimsta building-and to the peace of mind of its residents-is extensive.

Contrary to what you may think, such scenes are anything but rare in Sweden. Since 2018, the National Police have recorded 523 explosions, nearly 30 percent of which in Stockholm alone. If we look at shootings, the figures are even more alarming: 1840 have occurred in the same period, more than a third in the capital.

Behind these attacks are the young, often very young members of the many gangs that rule the streets of Swedish cities, both of large urban centres such as Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo, as well as of provincial towns such as Gävle, Helsinborg, Jönköping, Linköping, Sundsvall, and Västerås.

Swedish gangs are, so to speak, “amorphous” organisations: they have little hierarchy, lack specialization, have a fast and flexible recruitment process and lack any particular membership criteria, thus enabling a frequent turnover. According to a 2017 study, 76 percent of gang members are first- or second-generation immigrants, mainly from the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kurdistan) or the Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia). In the same gang, several of these ethnicities can coexist: the uniting factors for these young men are their neighborhood and their similar socio-economic status. Indeed, most gang members come from disadvantaged urban areas that are physically and culturally isolated from the rest of the city, have a predominantly foreign population and provide few opportunities for personal and professional development. Strongly tied to their territory, gangs rarely venture farther than the center of their own city.

The average age within these gangs is 20–24, well below the 30–34 in the rest of Europe. Minors are particularly numerous: according to Stockholm police, half of recently arrested individuals are under 18. A striking example is the 15-year-old arrested on Jan. 28 for the murder of a boy of his same age, perpetuated at dinnertime in front of a restaurant in downtown Skogås, south of Stockholm.

Finding weapons to commit these crimes is not a problem for teenagers in Sweden. Indeed, the Serbian and Syrian mafias import large quantities of guns in the country from former war territories in the Balkans and the Middle East and put them on the market at low prices. According to an investigation by the New York Times, in Sweden you can buy a grenade for less than 12.50 USD. And when it is not possible to buy them, it is enough for gangs to steal demolition explosives from a construction site or bribe someone to do it for them. As for firearms, handguns but also military rifles such as Kalashnikovs and Uzis are widespread.To hide the tracks of weapons used to commit crimes, gangs pass them from town to town. The result is that virtually all gang members circulate armed without much risk of being identified.

Emboldened by the possession of weapons, young gang members engage in various illegal activities, notably drug dealing, robberies and burglaries, but increasingly also contract killings, especially of rival gang members or their loved ones. It seems that the recent wave of violence in Stockholm is due to a war for the control of the drug market in Sundsvall, a port city in the centre of the country. Prosecutors believe factions involved are led by two leaders who pull the strings of the conflict from abroad, providing their affiliates with lists of people to kill at home. One of these leaders is reportedly safe in Turkey, from which extradition is not possible due to tensions between the Turkish and Swedish governments.

Getting minors to do the dirty work is an increasingly popular technique among Swedish gangs. Indeed, the sentences imposed on juveniles are lighter than on adults, which allows gangs to put their men back on the street more quickly. This strategy increasingly puts judges and public opinion in a tight position, especially in the face of serious crimes. It was the case, for instance, of the 17-year-old who killed a policeman in Biskopsgården, one of Gothenburg’s most marginalised neighbourhoods, in 2021. Even considering the aggravating factors, the court ended up sentencing the boy to “only” 8 years in prison instead of giving him the life sentence he would have received had he been only a few months older.

The risk of going to prison, or, worse, dying in a fight with other criminal groups, does not seem to discourage teenagers from getting involved in gangs — on the contrary, young people practically line up to get a gang assignment, which could even be a murder, in exchange for compensation. Celebrated in rap music, the violent world of gangs, made of shootings, fast cars and easy money, fascinates rather than alienates the youth of Sweden’s suburbs. Indeed, many boys see gangs as an avenue for personal fulfilment and improvement of their socioeconomic status.

The deep divide between life in gang-dominated neighbourhoods and life in the rest of Sweden — prosperous champion of social democracy and textbook example of welfare state — has led many to speak of “parallel societies.” To understand the origins of this divide, we need to go back a few years.

The origins of Sweden’s “parallel societies”

The idea of “parallel societies” is not new in Sweden.

The first mention of “street gangs” dates back to 1941, when the National Social Work Association published a report estimating the existence of 322 gangs between Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo. In the 1950s and 1960s, Sweden enacted policies to attract foreign workers, which led to a large influx of Finns, Italians, Greeks, and Yugoslavs in the country.

Within the Yugoslavian community developed an organisation that would dominate the Swedish criminal landscape for two decades between the 1970s and 1980s. This organization was initially led by Željko Ražnatović, also known as Arkan, a Serbian gangster, spy, and later war criminal, and it was primarily devoted to high-profile robberies. Following a series of internal feuds that led to the deaths of several leaders, the organization lost its primacy. The Serbian Mafia continues to exist in Sweden, but it is involved in other businesses, particularly drug, arms, and human trafficking.

The vacuum left in the late 1980s was soon filled by biker gangs, a type of organization imported from the United States via Denmark. Biker gangs are clubs of Harley Davidson aficionados, who mainly gather to celebrate their shared passion for motorcycles but who do not disdain illegal activities such as robberies and dealings with other organised crime groups. The first two such gangs in Sweden were the Bandidos MC and the Hells Angels, who established a system of local “sections” later copied by other competing groups.

Biker gangs provide a prime example of a parallel Swedish society: their members take pride in living outside of the mass society and often wear a star with the “1%” symbol to emphasise their identification as a minority. These gangs ended up fighting each other during the Great Nordic Biker Wars between 1994 and 1997, as a result of which the biker movement lost its hegemony, giving way to street gangs. Biker gangs continue to exist to date, but the threat they pose is marginal compared to street gangs.

Indeed, since the early 2000s Sweden has experienced a troubling growth in criminal activity by gangs with varying degrees of organisation based in predominantly migrant neighborhoods. At first glance, these dormitory blocks are decent and well-kept. Looking closely, however, you realize these areas lack supermarkets, cafes and leisure facilities and suffer from poor transport connections to the rest of the city, which effectively turns them into ghettos. The suburb of Rinkeby, near Stockholm, is a case in point. Separated from the more prosperous municipality of Sundyberg by a highway that forces a long detour to get to the other side, Rynkeby is like a gray island in a shimmering white sea. Another example of a multiethnic, marginal neighborhood is Rosengård, just outside of Malmo, famous for being the hometown of soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Starting in 2015, the street gang phenomenon accelerated partly due to the massive intake of asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, and Kurdistan, many of whom were unaccompanied minors. Left to their own devices, these children are particularly at risk of entering the destructive spiral of gangs, as they find in gangs an alternative to the family they no longer have.

The failure (or rather, absence) of an integration policy, however, is only one of the reasons why the street gang problem is so acute in Sweden today. Another is the dramatic increase in inequality in Swedish society over the past 30 years.

In his book “Greedy Sweden: How the People’s Homeland Became a Haven for the Super-rich,” journalist Andreas Cervenka explains the origins of this phenomenon. Beginning in the 1990s, Swedish governments abolished important redistributive taxes, such as wealth taxes, real estate taxes, and inheritance taxes. This decreased the tax burden for the better-off, allowing them to become even richer. As a result, the gap between the elite and the rest of the population took a steep increase. Today, Sweden is one of the countries with the highest number of billionaires per capita in the world, while nearly 15% of its population is economically fragile. Financial insecurity is increasingly visible not only among first- and second-generation immigrants, but also among Swedes. This is particularly evident in the City Missions that help the poor in urban areas. Indeed, in a recent interview with Euronews, Jonas Wihlstrand, secretary general of the association, stated that membership in social supermarkets has doubled compared to last year.

Another factor contributing to the increase in inequality is the privatization of public services such as education and health care, which has — ironically — taken place under social democratic governments. According to a school dean also interviewed by Euronews, the result of these reforms has been catastrophic for schools, especially in suburbs. Many children in deprived neighbourhoods do not go to kindergarten and therefore do not have the necessary foundations to enter first grade. The dropout rate in the senior year is very high because children find the final exam too difficult. For the dean, part of the problem is that in private schools only 30 to 40% of teachers have a bachelor’s degree, and that many of them inflate grades to prevent pupils from failing years, eventually causing them to arrive unprepared for senior year.

This means in turn that most gang members are poorly educated and have difficulty finding jobs outside the criminal world. Add to this prejudice against the residents of neighbourhoods with a criminal reputation, and it is easy to see why, growing up, many gang members see no alternative for their future. One young man interviewed on condition of anonymity by the Franco-German channel ARTE, for example, admitted having joined a gang when he was 15. At 29, he states that he is tired of gang life but has no idea how to get out of it.

Alternatives

Ways out do exist: in the city of Helsingborg, north of Malmo, several citizens have taken action to create them.

Nour Habib is a 30-year-old who grew up in Dahlem, one of the city’s most segregated neighbourhoods. Born in Iraq, he migrated to Sweden when he was 4 years old. As a teenager he chose the wrong company-in a criminal escalation, he turned first to vandalism, then to theft, robbery, and eventually to drug dealing. Drug dealing made him feel grown up and allowed him to hang out with older boys. Arrested during an armed robbery, however, Nour had to serve two and a half years in prison. His family disowned him, scarring him deeply. Upon his release in 2018, Nour decided to turn his life around. He launched an association called Trygg Rätt whose mission is to bring young people between the ages of 17 and 23 out of criminal circles. It does so through training and awareness-raising activities at the local level but also, and more importantly, by creating professional opportunities via a network of partner companies in the area. In the 2018–2022 period, Trygg Ratt managed to pull 63 of the 78 young men participating in its program out of crime and to find them regular employment. The organisation is active throughout Sweden, and young people can contact it directly through a form on its website-although Nour admits that most requests for help come via Instagram.

Instagram is a powerful channel to communicate with young people in Sweden. The policewoman Mona Ammar Persson knows it well. Of Lebanese descent but raised in the Soder area, Mona knows everyone in Helsingborg. When she joined the police a few years ago, she opened an instagram account to encourage other women to follow in her footsteps. Her approach: talking about her everyday work in an informal and accessible way and inviting followers to ask her questions. Today she has 27k followers and is a social media star for the kids in her neighbourhood.

Two of Mona’s childhood friends, brothers Omar and Hassan El Malli, are also striving to change things for the better. Omar studied sociology and criminology and now orients young people who are finishing school about their future. Many of those who do not join gangs want to become social workers or policemen. Hassan, on the other hand, works on the cultural aspect of the phenomenon: in his rap songs, he criticises rather than celebrates the gang lifestyle, especially highlighting the often understated phenomenon of violence against women in criminal environments.

The way forward

Laudable as they are, however, these efforts remain marginal without an adequate institutional response. Until a decade ago, Swedish authorities had difficulty even admitting the extent of the gang phenomenon. Now that serious accidents such as the murder of a policeman, the rise in explosions and the increased frequency of shootings in city centres have made the problem impossible to ignore, the state’s response remains inadequate. The ruling government, led by a moderate premier with the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, has put all its efforts into repression: a crackdown on migration policy, more severe punishment for young criminals, and a massive deployment of law enforcement. For policewoman Clarissa Seidou, who works in Rinkeby, focusing efforts on deportations of foreigners makes no sense: most of the suspects in her area were born in Sweden. Moreover, repression has little effect on gang boys — violence is normalized, neither death nor prison scares them. According to Clarissa, only collaboration between schools, police and social workers can pacify the neighborhood and bring young men back on track.

In conclusion, if Sweden wants to defeat gangs, it should stop tackling the symptoms and address the root causes of the problem: the growing social and economic marginalisation of an increasingly large part of the Swedish population.