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Detailed, comparative research on firearm violence in Europe is rare. Using data from the European Homicide Monitor, this paper presents the prevalence and characteristics of firearm homicides in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland between 2001 and 2016. Furthermore, we compare firearm to non-firearm homicides to assess the degree of uniqueness of firearms as modus operandi. We find that the firearm homicide rate varies across our sample of countries. We also identify two country profiles: in Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, most firearm homicides take place in public and urban areas, involving male victims and perpetrators. In these countries, the use of firearms in homicides is largely concentrated in the criminal milieu. In Finland and Switzerland, firearms are mostly used in domestic homicides, with a higher share of female victims. We explore these findings in relation to firearm availability in each country.

European nations are undergoing increasing cultural and religious pluralization. Yet, we know little about how crime victimization relates to religion. Different theories suggest that religion might protect from or, on the contrary, be a risk factor for victimization. Drawing on a youth survey (ISRD–3), we examine Finland and Switzerland, two nations with different histories with respect to religious pluralism. We did not observe associations suggesting that membership in minority religions would protect from victimization. The risk of hate crime victimization was elevated among Finnish Muslim youths, while in Switzerland, there appears to be a more general association between ‘other’ religious identification and victimization risk. We conclude by discussing avenues for future research.

Lethal violence is often seen as the tip of the iceberg and homicide perpetrators are seen as manifesting the most extreme number of various risk factors. This article explores whether that is the case. Using a unique data set combining data from several administrative registers with a nationally representative sample of different types of police-reported violence committed during 2010–2011 (N = 26,303 offenders) in Finland, we compare the offenders of five different types of violence (minor assault, assault, aggravated assault, attempted homicide, and completed homicide). In addition, we examine the association between the severity of violence and prior criminal history and different types of strain. The results give partial support to the hypothesis: the more serious the violence, the more crime prone and socially disadvantaged the offender. Yet, lethal offenders do not stand out alone; the division, rather, appears to be between offenders of serious (aggravated assault, attempted homicide, completed homicide) and less serious (minor assault, assault) forms of violence.

Much of the existing research on hate crime focuses on the perspective of victims, while relatively little is known of the offenders. This study examines the prevalence of hate-motivated offending in the form of assaults and bullying, and variables that may explain some of the influences for such behaviour. It compares hate-motivated offenders to both non-offenders and offenders committing non-hate-motivated acts. Our data are based on a nationally representative youth survey collected in 2012 (n = 4,855) from Finnish students attending ninth grade (ages 15–16). It relies on three central theories in criminology: strain, social control and self-control theories. Frequent parental fighting, low parental supervision, low social control and male gender were significant factors in explaining hate crime offending. Our results suggest that the three criminological theories are relevant in the analysis of hate crime offending among Finnish youth.

There is a distinct lack of knowledge about how the rise of private security relates to young people in adversarial encounters. Prior studies suggest that the policing of young people by police is a common occurrence and social biases exist. However, policing of young people by private security guards has gained much less attention. Drawing on a large-scale youth survey (N = 5826), this article examines the extent and social biases of adversarial contacts between private security guards and youths. The findings showed that 29% of 15- to 16-year-old Finnish youths reported adversarial security guard contact in a year. The open-ended responses indicated that young people were typically suspected of shoplifting, being a nuisance or drinking alcohol. Social biases were examined using the differential selection hypothesis, which suggests that some groups are disproportionately targeted. Multivariate analysis showed that, as expected, delinquency and alcohol use were associated with adversarial contacts. However, when these were controlled, living in a city, living in a non-nuclear family and low educational aspirations increased the likelihood of security guard interventions. The article compares the findings with prior studies of police control of youth. Similar results are that the probability for an individual to be selected is partly defined through his/her social status. However, results diverge concerning the gender effect. Our findings indicated that both boys and girls were equally likely to be targeted. The article places the findings with reference to the persistence of the labelling theoretical effects and discusses the transformations of policing connected to young people.

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of students who are placed in special needs education (SNE) groups within the school system. Consistent with this international trend, the percentage of Finnish students in SNE groups rose from 2.9% to 7.7% from 1995 to 2006. The inclusion of SNE groups in school-based delinquency research has become a salient issue for methodological adequacy. In the Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study, which is an indicator system with repeated measurements, SNE groups have been included. In this methodological article, we use the Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study (FSRD) 2001 sweep to analyse the relevance of that inclusion. First, we analyse the contribution of SNE students to the prevalence and incidence estimates of delinquency. Second, we examine how the inclusion or exclusion of SNE students influences observations of the correlates of delinquent behaviour. The results indicate that the population estimates of the overall delinquency prevalence a...

In this article, we present findings of crime media research conducted in Finland during recent years. As this body of research has mainly been published in Finnish, the core results have not been available for international audiences until now. The amount of crime news reporting has consistently increased both in the newspapers and in television news broadcasts during the last decades. A series of representative surveys also show that the majority of people read and view crime news on a regular basis and are thus constantly exposed to these media messages. We conclude our article by contrasting crime news trends with the development of fear of crime in Finland, and by discussing possible links and explanations to the relationship.

In this article, we explore the relationship between the use of crime news and fear of violence through multivariate analyses. Our main objective is to examine whether exposure to crime news is related to avoidance behaviour and fear of crime when personal and vicarious victimization experiences, as well as a number of other relevant factors, are held constant. Using the 2003 sweep of the Finnish National Victimization Surveys, we focus on two types of crime news exposure: exposure to crime‐related tabloid headlines, and the scope of exposure to different sources of crime news. Our main finding is that reading tabloid front pages is associated with both avoidance behaviour and with higher levels of worry about becoming a victim of violence. We also found that people who expose themselves to many sources of crime news are more likely to fear violence. As an interesting by‐product of our analyses, we observed that being unemployed was quite strongly associated with fear of violence.

In the early 1960s, 15% of Finnish homicide offenders committed suicide after the crime. In 1998–2000, this ratio was 6%. The downward trend was due to the increase in non-suicidal homicide, as well as to a substantial decrease in the general homicide-suicide rate. Over the time span, the rate of suicidal homicide offenders per 100,000 population was halved. The decrease took place in the two most significant homicide-suicide types (that is, those of intimate-partner homicides and parent-child killings) and, within these crime types, in crimes committed by men. The present article describes the prevalence and trend of homicide-suicide in Finland, and examines the socio-economic correlates of this phenomenon. The findings indicate that the percentage and the rate of homicide-suicide have been consistently highest among middle classes and lowest among the unemployed and working classes. Victim-offender relationship, stressful life events, and alcohol consumption are discussed as explanations for this stable...

This paper describes the Finnish homicide trend between 1950 and 1999. The homicide rate decreased steadily and reached the lowest level of the century in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s, an abrupt increase in the homicide rate took place. The paper examines this rate shift by first disaggregating and then comparing the homicides of pre-increase years (1965-69) and increase years (1970-74). A database including all cases of interpersonal lethal violence between 1965 and 1974 is utilized. The analysis indicates increase of homicide reflected mainly male-to-male conflicts, the participants of which were increasingly often under the influence of alcohol. In a tentative interpretation, the homicide rate shift of the early 1970s is attributed to three factors: (1) a sudden liberalization of alcohol that the policy in 1969and the consequent increase of alcohol consumption, (2) weekend extension to Saturdays and (3) the coincidence in time of these political reforms with large scale social transformation and ...

Among lay people as well as among scholars it is sometimes assumed that adolescent work deters juvenile delinquency. In contrast, existing research suggests that there is a positive association between adolescent parttime work and delinquency. This study assesses this claim and examines in a nationally representative sample of 15-16-yearold Finnish adolescents ( n = 4347), the association between work during the school year and self-reported delinquency and victimization, and explore whether the possible associations are general or based on some subcategory of delinquent behaThere viour/victimization. The results of multivariate analyses indicate that intensive weekly working is significantly positively associated with delinquent behaviour. When gender, disposable allowances and various factors suggested by control, strain and differential association theories were controlled for, intensive work (10 hours or more remained a significant predictor of the following types of delinquency: beating up someone, d...

This study examines the association between self-reported delinquent behaviour and psychosomatic symptoms in a nationally representative sample of 15-16-year old Finnish adolescents. Some theorists have suggested that psychosomatic symptoms are related to inability to break culturally given norms. If this is so, delinquents should have less symptoms than non-delinquents. To assess this idea, two hypotheses are formulated: delinquency is associated with decreased symptoms (the 'hydraulic' hypothesis), or delinquency is associated with increased symptoms (the 'stress' hypothesis). In support of the second hypothesis, the results indicate that delinquency and psychosomatic symptoms are positively associated. The effect of delinquency on symptoms is robust in the presence of a number of control variables. The findings are discussed i.a. from the point of view of increasing research interest in the positive effects of delinquency. While positive effects are likely to exist in specific contexts, delinquency as ...

According to Zimring & Hawkins, the exceptionally high level of homicide in the USA is unrelated to the nation's overall crime problem. In contrast to this statement, a critical review of their evidence suggests that criminal activity may explain a significant share of the excess levels of lethal violence in the USA. As a first step towards testing this hypothesis, we have created a uniform victim-level data file of information on the method and the situational context of homicide cases in Finland and the USA. In support of the hypothesis, we find that homicides that occur in the context of another crime are much more prevalent in the USA than in Finland. This difference accounts for 35% of the overall gap in the homicide rate between these two nations. Moreover, our research indicates that the effect of the criminal context cannot be reduced to the 'instrument effect', i.e. the fact that handguns are much more prevalent in the USA. In light of these findings, it would be premature, in terms both of theor...