Individuals’ life chances are shaped by the times and events that they experience. This emphasizes the need for studies that focus on staggered birth cohorts. The article presents a new longitudi-nal data set that includes three complete Swedish birth cohorts, born in 1965, 1975 and 1985. Comparisons between the different birth cohorts show how offending distributions among young offenders, as well as their socio-demographic backgrounds and life chances, have developed over time. The analyses of stability and change presented in the study may serve as a point of departure for more informed discussions of the significance of societal changes for the criminality and life chances of male and female offenders.

This chapter describes trends in crime among Swedish youth on the basis of both official statistics and alternative indicators, noting a decline over time both in the general level of youth involvement in crime and in the size of the gender gap, particularly in official statistics. The system of reactions to youth crime in Sweden is described, together with central reforms implemented over the past 15 years and trends in sanctioning practice since the mid-1990s. Returning to the issue of the declining gender gap, the chapter concludes by presenting new data on both justice system sanctions and childhood resources and by discussing what these data might contribute to our understanding and interpretation of the declining sex differences in officially recorded crime.

I rapporten beskrivs barns och ungas utsatthet för brott samt ungdomsbrottslighetens omfattning och utveckling. Dessutom analyseras de demografiska och sociala bakgrundsfaktorerna bakom ungdomsbrottslighet.