Den straffande vändningen - En studie i kriminalpolitikens utveckling från 1960-talet tills idag med fokus på de unga lagöverträdarna

Sammanfattning: Young offenders have long been treated differently than adult offenders in the Swedish penal system. Anyone who commits crimes before the age of 21 is today treated differently both in terms of the sentencing measure and the choice of penalty. Among other things, the young offenders gets their sentence reduced by the so-called “penalty discount”. In December of 2018 a government department issued a proposal for the abolition of the penalty discount for young offenders between the ages of 18 and 20. The proposal would largely have the effect that the special treatment that young offenders today enjoy would be reduced from 21 to 18 years. From a legal point of view, the proposal has been met by a lot of criticism, as well as from a political perspective. The department behind the proposal has also concluded that there is no experience-based or empirical support for eliminating the penalty discount. Despite the criticism, the government has nevertheless chosen to proceed with the proposal. In recent times, the crime policy in Sweden has been moving towards an increasingly harsher climate and is increasingly characterized by politicization, increased alarmism, sharpened punishment and an emotional rather than a rational attitude. The principles that have previously been the basis for the existence of the penal code now seem to weigh less heavily. Against this background, the aim of the thesis is to identify the reasons behind the development of a tougher political climate as regards criminality, which is illustrated through the proposal for a more restrictive penalty discount. In order to meet the purpose of the essay, the essay's overall question asks why the government is pursuing a legal reform that lacks empirical or experience-based support. The analysis concludes that the development of criminal policy depends on several factors, noting that the criticism that emerged in relation to the special treatment of young offenders during the 1960s and 1970s appears to have played a particularly crucial role. The criticism that arises in the social debate seems to result in a lasting sense of pessimism that came to characterize the criminal policy field and eventually also the legal system. In order to return the criminal policy to the state, a redefinition of the crime problem is made, which seems to have had the effect of making the crime problem perceived as more serious than it may actually be. The analysis also pursues the argument that increased security in society has become a more important target for criminal policy than reduced crime, which in turn has had the effect of a reduced focus on the actual effectiveness of the criminal policy measures. The thesis concludes that the main task of politics is to respond to what the people want and the people appear to want a stricter approach and more restrictive penalty discount.