"Where there are young people, there are also criminal networks. Everywhere where young people hang out, including at the municipality's sports facilities, there are attempts at recruitment."
This is what Sigtuna municipality writes in a free-text response to DN in the survey about gang-related crime at, or in connection with, sports grounds that DN has sent to all municipalities in Sweden.
The Upland municipality is not alone in this type of response.
Sport reflects society. This means that the debate about gang crime, and not least the risk of recruiting children and young people into organized crime, becomes a parameter here as well.
"We are generally concerned about places where children and young people stay and hang out," writes the municipality of Norrköping, among other things.
Burlöv municipality in Skåne:
"Even if we do not experience a specific gang-related problem at the municipality's sports fields, the feeling is always imminent with the new establishment of different gangs in the municipality."
Vallentuna notes in his answer that people the municipality knows to be with the police have been seen moving around municipal sports fields:
"We can also guess that they have 'hiding places' there as it may be about odd times and deviant behavior of these individuals at the site," writes the municipality and lists what municipal residents have advised them about:
"Persons with deviant behavior and attributes that speak for criminality move around the area with electric scooters during training hours, seek contact with young people and 'look for new spring ices'."
287 of the country's 290 municipalities responded to DN's survey between May 12 and July 1 this year.
54 municipalities, i.e. almost every fifth municipality in Sweden (18.6 percent), state that they have experienced problems linked to gang-related crime at or in connection with the municipality's sports facilities.
It could, for example, be about recruitment attempts, about "hiding" of drugs, violence and/or threats, vandalism or simply that the sports fields are used as a meeting place for criminals.
86 municipalities (29.7 percent) state that they are concerned about the phenomenon.
Eslöv municipality has not experienced the problem, but writes:
"The concern is linked to the increased sense of links between gang-related crime and sport in general, which is increasingly visible in the media."
In recent years, suspected cases of recruitment into gang crime have been noticed at several sports venues in Sweden, including in Solna, Huddinge, Stockholm and Umeå.
As of last year, the government has granted the Swedish Sports Confederation (RF) ten million kroner a year to fight various types of sports-related crime.
In April, RF presented a survey made in collaboration with Tryggare Sverige, which showed that 13 percent of Sweden's sports federations have become aware of some form of organized crime in sports in the past year (sports corruption, criminal infiltration or recruitment to criminal gangs). Among the 1,826 sports associations that participated in the same survey, the figure was seven percent.
- We might have expected larger numbers in the associations' survey responses, but we believe that there is a culture of silence and that people simply do not have knowledge of these phenomena, RF's head of security Lena Sahlin told DN at the time.
- This is why we need to strengthen our muscles, so that you are not alone in these decisions, but can join hands with the municipality and the police.
In DN's municipal survey, 30 municipalities respond that they have noted attempts to recruit, or suspected attempts to recruit, children and young people at (or in connection with) their sports facilities.
"We have received information that young people have requested phone numbers of younger young people, which has raised suspicions of possible recruitment," writes the city of Stockholm, for example.
29 municipalities have found so-called "hiding places" in their facilities.
- The work of the police has changed over the years, explains Anen Makboul, crime prevention coordinator in Haninge municipality.
- They remain interesting young people all the time, so these individuals no longer carry drugs or weapons - but this is usually hidden, and it can be in everything from flower boxes to trash cans, in public toilets, under roofs and under the artificial grass on soccer fields.
Haninge municipality has found hiding places for drugs in all of the environments he describes - and has implemented safety-creating measures in the form of, among other things, increased adult presence, improved lighting and trimming of bushes.
Larger cities and surrounding municipalities stand out in the statistics in DN's survey.
But the problem picture is not isolated to metropolitan areas alone.
For example, Sala municipality writes:
"We don't have our own established gangs, but we see 'hang-arounds' and that people with connections to gangs in neighboring municipalities are at our sports fields."
"There are attempts to recruit, but mainly a little older - so not the really young. We have seen the sale of narcotics, that narcotics are hidden in connection, etc. With regard to violence, it is quite difficult to determine which violence has connections to specific gangs, but there are indications."
Bollnäs has problems connected to one of its outdoor facilities. The place has in periods functioned as a meeting place for groups connected to crime:
"In addition to this, we have recently had an incident in connection with a sports hall where a suspected 'hidden' of gun-like objects was found. The incident caused concern, but on inspection it turned out to be intimidation and not a sharp weapon."
The municipality of Härnösand writes that it has established closer contact with the police and social services after problems with arranged fights. Kalmar municipality talks about how threatening people have moved in the public areas of a sports facility, but also about "a lot of vandalism and not least that our sports facilities are used to either store drugs or maybe even to hand over prohibited substances".
Among the municipalities close to big cities, Botkyrka, south of Stockholm, highlights a specific case:
"Citizens have reported that one or more young adults, estimated to be around 20 years old, approached some 11-year-olds and asked if they wanted a job. The children got scared and ran home to their guardians to tell them about the incident and that they had been offered work by unknown persons. As a result, several guardians went out to try to find the person(s)."
The city of Malmö lists a number of problems at its sports grounds linked to gang-related crime. DN's survey has been answered by Malmö's field assistants:
"We know that the administration concerned has increased surveillance, even we at Ungdomsfält try to be on site and catch young people so they don't risk being recruited."
The list of measures that municipalities have taken to prevent the problem is long, and similar in many municipalities - regardless of whether they have been affected by gang-related crime or not.
It is about information meetings and reconciliations with associations and guardians, about more monitoring and adult presence, closer contact with the police and other actors in society as well as about regular follow-up.
In Uddevalla, shell protection has been reviewed "when unauthorized people stay in the halls we were worried about". Tyresö mentions, among other things, locks and alarms, Ystad a personal "tag" that is needed to enter the facilities and Gothenburg safety-creating measures such as "home walking support".
Örebro writes about several crime prevention efforts:
"For example, removal of bushes and increased visibility around facilities as well as improved lighting to increase security. Guards and field assistants move around the areas. Some sports facilities are locked and only authorized persons have access. We carry out ongoing checks so that those who have rented the premises/facility are the ones who use it."
Uppsala municipality mentions the importance of cooperation between different actors such as the municipality, police, school and social services.
Just like a number of other municipalities, they also refer to EST ("effective coordination for safety") - a systematic way of working between different social agencies to increase and monitor safety in an area:
"EST provides an overall and ongoing situational picture of insecurity in the municipality, where recurring patterns and locations are identified. This allows the municipality to implement early and targeted measures based on current needs."
