Sebastian Stakset has lost 38 friends to gang violence – many of whom, he points out from the window of his non-profit’s Stockholm base, are buried in Skogskyrkogården cemetery on the opposite side of the metro track.
Close by, the rapper and reformed gang member points to another personal landmark from the neighbourhood he grew up in: the psychiatric clinic. “After a suicide attempt, I ended up there,” says the 38-year-old.
Having risen to fame as a member of the Swedish gangster rap group Kartellen and been involved with serious crime from a young age, Stakset is intimately familiar with Sweden’s justice system. He served two years and nine months for serious assault, two years for robbery and six months for aggravated weapons offence.
He is also well acquainted with the societal deprivation he says has led to the country’s problems with gang crime.
“This is 2km away from the epicentre of the gang violence in Sweden,” he says, speaking in his office in southern Stockholm. “So a lot of the reports of shootings, bombings and killings have been here.”
In January to November 2023, there were 346 shootings in Sweden, according to police statistics, 52 of which were fatal. The country’s death rate from gun crime is the second highest in Europe, after Albania’s.
The young people Stakset works with lack hope, he says, while the government’s plan – tougher rhetoric and harsher punishments for younger children – will not work. “You cannot punish away this problem because for every kid you lock up there are three new [children] coming.”
The roots of the problem go back decades, says Stakset, who first got involved in gang crime in 2004.
“It’s the parallel society that grows from social injustice. They [politicians] hate when I say it but it’s true,” he adds. “I know people who got involved in 91 and 81 and 71. Now the social injustice is on a mass scale.”
Dealing with the underlying societal problems are critical, he believes, to fixing the problem of youth crime. Otherwise, it is tantamount to “putting a bandage on a gunshot wound.”, he says
Stakset’s journey into the gang world started as a child when he was bullied at school, was suffering from then-undiagnosed ADHD and felt like he did not fit into the education system. Looking for the approval of older figures, he started stealing and was soon climbing the criminal ladder.
“I went in and out of prison. We started Sweden’s first gangster rap group. We declared war on the Swedish government and the Swedish police,” he says. “It was a hellish existence.”
By the time he was 27, he was burned out, hearing voices in his head and suicidal. “I have 38 friends that died,” Stakset says, voice wobbling. “I’ve been in shootings, I’ve been in stabbings, I’ve been in everything you can imagine and also living with death threats, bulletproof vest and a gun.”
Over the next few years, Stakset discovered Christianity, a process through which he found a new life. Now, through his organisation Heart of Evangelism, which he founded in 2018 and has branches around the country, he works actively in prevention, doing lectures, visiting prisons and offering support to young people. He continues to make music and is soon to star in a film. His religion, he says, does not affect his expectations of those he helps, but it inspires him to do more.
“I know how it feels to suffer and not have hope, and I know how it feels to hate society and be a very dark person and everybody seeing you as a problem,” the father of three says, adding that children caught up in gang violence need people to see their positive potential.
“People are scared of them [young people] but I hug them. I give them love because I do love them and I know that this is not evil.”
Among his projects is a centre for helping women who have drug use problems, founded in memory of his late girlfriend, who killed herself while addicted to heroin. He also wants to open a gym in the neighbourhood to provide alternatives to crime. There, he says, “if they’re used to running with a gun we will give them MMA gloves”.
The difference for young people now compared with when he was growing up, Stakset says, is that the overall level is more extreme and the gang recruitment process is faster and targeting younger children. “It can go so fast. It can go two to three months and you’re all the way in it and how are you going to escape it?”
Children are being turned into “soldiers” by adults who want to avoid prison sentences, he says, pushing younger people into crime. But the government’s proposals to lower the age of criminal responsibility and change age rules on sentencing, he believes, will only radicalise more young people through learning from older criminals.
Sweden’s homes for young offenders - known as SiS - are “the most ugly thing about Sweden”, he says. Stakset describes himself as a “problem child” when he first went into prison, but through the contacts he made there, he was soon “robbing banks and selling kilos of cocaine”.
Stakset says there needs to be more of a focus on crime prevention, for children aged eight and up. Stakset agrees. “Putting 12-, 13- and 14-year-olds in these prisons is just going to make future gang leaders.”
If it were up to him, he would go into the worst affected areas and make “the best schools in Sweden” and set up social centres that offer special benefits in return for meeting behavioural rules.
In prisons, he would offer people an ultimatum: do they want to be a gangster or do they want a second chance with a job and apartment? The vast majority, he believes, would take the non-criminal route and crime would decrease.
Stakset will back whichever politician is willing to fix the problem, saying a long-term depoliticised plan is needed. “Party lines don’t matter because they need to cooperate to get a 20-year plan and stick with it.”
