Youth crime in Oslo has reached levels that concern experienced police officers.

Section leader Freddy Kørra-Østby, with 20 years’ service in the police, tells Avisa Oslo about a daily reality marked by younger perpetrators and a total lack of respect for the uniform. Last year, 3,107 reports were registered against children and young people under the age of 18, which represents a marked increase compared with the period before the pandemic.

Immigrant background and crime statistics

Figures from Statistics Norway (Statistisk sentralbyrå, SSB) and the Oslo police substantiate the seriousness of the situation and illuminate the connection between background and crime. According to SSB’s statistics on charges for criminal offences, persons with an immigrant background are significantly overrepresented in the statistics for violent offences and robberies committed by young people in Oslo.

The police’s own reports for Oslo East (Oslo Øst) show that a very high proportion of the most active repeat offenders in youth environments have backgrounds from countries outside Europe. In areas such as Groruddalen and Søndre Nordstrand, where the proportion of immigrants is high, the East unit alone handles more than half of all youth crime cases in the capital. The figures show that approximately 40 per cent of these cases now involve children under the age of 15.

Stabbings and a culture of silence

Kørra-Østby highlights an incident from Haugerud, where a 16-year-old was stabbed in the hip, as an example of the new culture. While the boy was close to losing consciousness due to heavy blood loss, he refused to give a statement to the police, stating that he would not speak without a lawyer present. This type of culture of silence is becoming the norm in criminal environments where children as young as 13 are recruited to carry out serious acts, such as throwing hand grenades on assignment.

Many of these youths operate within criminal networks that deliberately exploit the fact that the children are below the age of criminal responsibility. This means that the police are often forced to release them again shortly after arrest, which creates frustration both within the police and among residents in vulnerable areas.

Fear of reprisals and low trust

In neighbourhoods such as Furuset, trust in the police is low, and many residents fear reprisals if they report crime. A security survey shows that residents have refrained from reporting explosions and drug dealing for fear of retaliatory actions from the gangs that dominate the local area.

Kørra-Østby emphasises that the uniform has lost its significance for these youths. Female police officers are routinely called prostitutes, and respect for the enforcers of the law appears to be absent among the youngest offenders. He is now calling for a far stronger apparatus from the state to deal with the children when they can no longer be managed by the police or the ordinary child welfare services.

Neither the government nor the Municipality of Oslo has so far presented measures that have effectively succeeded in slowing the recruitment of children with an immigrant background into these hardened criminal environments.