From the Playground to the Streets - Children and Youths’ Recruitment into Criminal Gangs in Sweden. A scoping review

Abstract

The thesis is a qualitative scoping review study aimed to explore the recruitment of children and youth into criminal gangs in Sweden, focusing on understanding reasons for why children and youth become involved in criminal gangs, risk factors and effects from gang involvement, the role of social work in preventing such recruitment and lessons learned from other European countries. The study employed a scoping review for mapping of existing literature and conducted a thematic reflexive analysis to identify patterns and themes in the data to eleven selected studies. Key findings are that gangs are very accessible to children as they often are located in disadvantaged neighborhoods, parents’ lack of support, school systems lack of resources to children who need extra help and friends creating peer pressure for children to join gangs. The effects of children in gangs are both psychological and physical, social workers are involved by trying to steer away children and youth from getting associated with gangs and from international insights it is known that children should be offered school and recreational activities. Conclusions drawn are that the issue of criminal gangs could have its roots from the segregations created by the Million project, where thousands of apartments were built during a short timespan, and that these disadvantaged neighborhoods have with time gotten heightened crime rates, as gangs expand and start to include children. The children are severely affected socially, psychologically and physically due to the gang presence, something social workers together with other actors such as the police and school can take collaborative measures to prevent by offering children a positive alternative.