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CRIME

Tougher rules for criminal psychiatric patients

People who are convicted of crimes and sentenced to psychiatric care could face tougher restrictions when they are released, according to Sweden's justice minister, Beatrice Ask.

Published: 3 January 2007 11:35 CET

Convicts sent to secure hospitals are released when their conditions are under control. Ask wants it to be made possible to take former patients back into hospital if they fail to take their medicine or if they start using drugs or alcohol.

“Today it is possible [for doctors] to prescribe medicine, but one cannot force someone to take it and one doesn’t check up on it. This is something we could change,” she told Svenska Dagbladet.

As well as forcing patients to take their medicine, Ask is considering demands for convicted psychiatric patients to live in a designated home and to keep regular contact with health workers. These proposals have already been put forward by an official psychiatry commission.

Concerns over the care of dangerous psychiatric patients in Sweden has grown in recent years following a number of random attacks by unstable individuals. The most high-profile of these was the murder of foreign minister Anna Lindh by Mijailo Mijailovic, who was reported in the media to have been released from a psychiatric institution just days before the killing.

As of May 2005, the last date for which figures are available, 1,400 convicts were in secure psychiatric units. Of these, 900 were classed as needing special permission before they could be released. In these cases, a court must approve applications for release.

CRIME

Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs using apps to hire ‘child soldiers’

The justice ministers of Denmark, Sweden and Norway are to meet representatives of the tech giants Google, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok, to discuss how to stop their platforms being used by gang criminals in the region.

Published: 20 September 2024 10:31 CEST
Nordic justice ministers meet tech giants on gangs using apps to hire 'child soldiers'

Denmark’s justice minister, Peter Hummelgaard, said in a press release that he hoped to use the meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss how to stop social media and messaging apps being used by gang criminals, who Danish police revealed earlier this year were using them to recruit so-called “child soldiers” to carry out gang killings.  

“We have seen many examples of how the gangs are using social media and encrypted messaging services to plan serious crimes and recruit very young people to do their dirty work,” Hummelgaard said. “My Nordic colleagues and I agree that a common front is needed to get a grip on this problem.”

As well as recruitment, lists have been found spreading on social media detailing the payments on offer for various criminal services.   

Hummelgaard said he would “insist that the tech giants live up to their responsibilities so that their platforms do not act as hotbeds for serious crimes” at the meeting, which will take place at a summit of Nordic justice ministers in Uppsala, Sweden.

In August, Hummelgaard held a meeting in Copenhagen with Sweden’s justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer, at which the two agreed to work harder to tackle cross-border organised crime, which has seen a series of Swedish youth arrested in Denmark after being recruited to carry out hits in the country. 

According to a press release from the Swedish justice ministry, the morning will be spent discussing how to combat the criminal economy and particularly organised crime in ports, with a press release from Finland’s justice ministry adding that the discussion would also touch on the “undue influence on judicial authorities” from organised crime groups. 

The day will end with a round table discussion with Ronald S Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, on how anti-Semitism and hate crimes against Jews can be prevented and fought in the Nordic region. 

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