@misc{9227394,
  abstract     = {{The debate on criminal policy has in recent years largely been about young offenders. Children under the age of 15 are exploited by organised crime in order to commit serious crimes as a result of childrens special treatment in criminal law. These children have not yet reached the age of criminal responsibility but can still commit crimes in the legal sense according to Swedish law.
Since 1964, there has been an opportunity to try childrens responsibility for a crime in criminal court by a so-called evidentiary hearing. The institute of evidentiary hearing was introduced into Swedish law in order to provide legal certainty for children who were accused of having committed a crime. The evidentiary hearing aimed to provide an improved decisionmaking basis for the child welfare agencies. An exception regarding children under 15 in criminal law were thus made in a social law purpose. The institute was used very restrictively and by 2023 only five cases of evidentiary hearing had been tried.
In July 2023 an amendment were made regarding the evidentiary hearing in order to increase its usage. The prosecutor was given an independent right to initiate a hearing and was also given an obligation to do so according to a rule of presumtion to initiate a hearing of crimes with a minimum sentence of five years. The legislator emphasized that additional purposes concerned rectificat-ion for victims and the society´s interest in investigating and prosecuting cri-mes. The amendment had intended effect and between the years of 2024 and 2025 an evidentiary hearing was conducted against 126 children. 
This essay aims to, from a developmental perspective, examine the nature of the evidentiary hearing institute and how the concept of responsibility changes in relation to children under 15 within it. By using a combination of the legal analytical method and the empirical method, the institute is studied by a quantitativ study which examines the institute from the time of its introduction to Swedish law until 2 April 2026.
By using the English terminology for responsibility, the concept of responsibility is discussed in relation to children under 15 years and it is made visible how the concept of responsibility changes from respnsible to accountable. It is argued that such change leads to children under 15 being considered to have the same capacity for responsibility which is required for criminal liability.
The essay also finds that the nature of the evidantiary hearing has shifted from a primarily child-caring institute to a nature which increasingly resembles the ordinary criminal justice system. This is due to the change of the childrens responsibility and thus its correspondense with the responsibility of an adult within the ordinary criminal justice system. This happens as a result of the additional purposes by which the child can be held accountable in purposes opposite of its own and by the manner in which the childs criminal intent is tried to a large extent as of an adult.}},
  author       = {{Johansson, Nilla Ruth Elisabeth}},
  language     = {{swe}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Barnen är vår (straffrätts) framtid - En analys av rättsinstitutet bevistalans karaktär och ansvarsbegreppet i förhållande till barn under 15 år inom straffrätten}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}