Barn och brott : en studie om socialtjänstens yttranden i straffprocessen för unga lagöverträdare

Sammanfattning: A basic pillar of the Swedish juvenile justice system is that children who commit crimes at first hand should be surrendered to the local social services authorities (further on: also welfare agencies) for treatment, according to their needs. This is based on the idea that children lack the capacity to fully understand the consequences of their crimes. A main prerequisite for this is that the welfare agencies have given a statement to the prosecutor or the criminal court. In this statement the welfare agencies are expected to clearly describe the child’s situation and needs and what kind of measures the child will receive, if surrendered to the welfare agencies. In 1998 a child’s perspective and the concept of the best interest of the child was introduced in the Social services act. A legal reform in 1999 in the criminal code emphasised that young lawbreakers should be punished more proportionate to the severity of their crimes. The latter reform aimed at making the juvenile justice system more predictable and fair, based on important criminal justice principles. It also aimed at making the statements from the welfare agencies more clarifying in the criminal justice process. The aim of this thesis is to scrutinise, describe and analyse these statements from the welfare agencies to the courts, how the courts consider these statements and to what extent the statements has influenced the criminal courts in their penalty sentencing for boys aged 15-17 years suspected and convicted of assault and battery and grand assault and battery. The study is limited to Stockholm County in the years 1998 and 2000. Different methods and material are used. Laws, preparatory documents and legal doctrines are studied. The empirical material consists of criminal statistics, 103 statement from the welfare agencies and 103 criminal court records in the same criminal cases. The laws are studied as communicative systems, i.e. discourses. A sample of six statements are analysed as a discoursive genre under pressure from different kinds of legal and societal demands, to discern specific patterns in the statements. Then 15 statements are analysed together with 15 criminal court records in a neoinstitutional organisational context. The result indicates that the juvenile justice system seem to be unpredictable and unfair due to several factors that are linked to each other. There is a strikin, uncertaint/ in the statements because of ,reat variations in how they are written, difficulties to discern on 2hat ,roun4s interventions are 4eci4e4, and what the welfare agencies judge as a social problem that require an intervention and 2hat is meant b/ the chil47s nee4 in the statements. Theconce8t of the best interest of the chil4 is not e:8resse4 as an important factor in the statements. The statements contains two different foci and three different strategies; no interventions;interventions; and a blen4e4 strate,/. Interventions are proposed on the grounds of the chil47s nee4s as well as the need to 8unish the chil4 for his crime in a criminal