The two justice ministers, Denmark’s Peter Hummelgaard and Sweden’s Gunnar Strömmer, announced joint objectives by the two countries at a briefing in Copenhagen.
“We are unfortunately well aware that gang violence knows no borders. Our response must therefore be strong and coordinated,” Hummelgaard said.
As part of the agreement, Denmark and Sweden will increase information sharing and efforts to prevent recruitment of young criminals online, the ministers confirmed.
The two Nordic countries said they also wanted to strengthen coordination with third countries where crime bosses might be located or in hiding.
This would be with the aim of extraditing more criminals to Denmark and Sweden so that “criminal masterminds can face the consequences of their actions,” they said.
Hummelgaard did not name any specific countries which might be the subject of such agreements.
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The joint statement from the two countries pronounces “intensified efforts” to prevent gangs from recruiting youths using social media.
“It’s scary that people can be so cynical that they take advantage of children and young people to get them to commit assassinations,” Hummelgaard said.
Strömmer stated that Sweden will clamp down on “serious violence” using Denmark’s anti-gang legislation as an inspiration in a “historic” change of tact.
“This means three things: clamping down hard on the violence, stripping the criminals of their economies and breaking the recruitment of children and young people,” he said.
The minister also said it was a “fact” that gang crime had not been sufficiently dealt with in Sweden in recent years.
A spate of violent crimes including shootings, suspected to have been committed by young Swedes in Danish gang crime circles, recently resulted in Hummelgaard implementing additional checks on the Denmark-Sweden border.
That includes higher police presence on trains crossing the Öresund Bridge linking the two countries, and improved number plate recognition technology.
Hummelgaard said on August 8th that as many as 25 criminal incidents since April have involved recruitment of Swedish youths by gangs in Denmark.
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