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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.

Key societal macro-trends, such as immigration and the increasing salience of post-secular and identity-based religiosity, are converging to increase the relevance of religion in everyday life. Such developments call for a reassessment of the religion–victimisation link. We analyse the prevalence and severity patterns of hate victimisation in different groups defined by religion and explore the links between routine activities and lifestyle factors in hate crime victimisation. Our research site, Finland, is a country with a long history of religious homogeneity, recently interrupted by religious pluralisation. We draw on the 2020 sweep of the Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study (FSRD), a nationally representative crime survey targeting 15–16-year-olds (N = 5482). We found that religiously unaffiliated and Muslim youths have an above-average risk of hate crime victimisation. There were some indications that the patterns of victimisation are different across religious denominations. For instance, Muslim youths were more likely to be attacked by adults. Hate crime victimisation risk was not mediated by routines and lifestyles. Independent of religion, there was, however, a strong and direct positive association between hate victimisation and a risky lifestyle, i.e. substance use and interaction with delinquent peers. Comparing the findings with assault victimisation, we observed that the results are largely specific to hate crime offending rather than assault victimisation in general. We discuss the findings from the perspective of criminological theory, future research needs, and policy implications.

In prior research, intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization has been predominantly studied as distinct from other forms of violent victimization. As a result, relatively little is known about ...

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This research brief is the manual of the Historical Homicide Monitor (HHM), providing background information, general coding instructions, and the detailed Historical Homicide Monitor 2.0 codebook. The Historical Homicide Monitor: • Is intended for use in long-duration homicide research, enabling comparisons of homicide patterns and rates over long time spans and across study regions. • Transforms information from qualitative-textual sources into a standardized and mostly quantitative format. • Is source neutral: any type of qualitative source can be made commensurate with other sources by using the instrument. • Is designed to be compatible with the European Homicide Monitor standard (Granath et al. 2011), with identical, compatible and new variables. Compatible variables come with transformation syntax for full or enhanced mutual comparability. Data structure is compatible. • Has been developed to reflect the main theories of historical criminology while retaining flexibility in theoretical operationalizations. • Has been developed and tested in the Nordic area but can be applied anywhere. • Has been developed and tested in early modern and modern data but can be applied and improved for use in any historical period. • Requires standard procedures of historical source criticism and criminological validity assessments when used in research. The Historical Homicide Monitor was developed in the cross-national and interdisciplinary project “Nordic Homicide from Past to Present”, which brought together Nordic criminologists and historians. Funded by the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology, the project used early modern court protocols from Denmark (1608–1622), Sweden (1640–1650) and Finland (1640–1699), 20th century criminal justice sources from Iceland (1900–1989), and contemporary homicide monitors from the same countries (2006–2017) to create a long-duration homicide research instrument. The Historical Homicide Monitor 2.0 manual is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. The manual can be used and distributed freely in research and teaching; no permissions are required. The manual can be used in full or in part. To ensure comparability and data merger options, variable names and categories should not be changed. nonPeerReviewed

An extensive body of criminological research has shown that criminaland violent behaviour manifests time patterns in terms of daily,weekly and annual cycles. This is consistent with criminologicalroutine activities theory. Can we generalize these patterns to historicalperiods? In this article, we draw on a recently created uniquedataset, covering the years 1608–1699 in three Nordic regions, toexplore time cycles of offending in the early modern period.Examining daily, weekly and annual cycles, we find that lethalviolence manifested strong time patterns in the early modernperiod. The role of public holidays was central especially in theperiod lasting from Christmas to Midsummer. Probing the role ofkey routines, we disaggregated the composition of homicide cyclesby alcohol use and place of occurrence. The findings indicated thatearly modern homicide time cycles were associated with alcoholuse and activities in private places. We conclude by discussing thestrengths and limitations of our data and by suggesting furtherresearch in the promising frontier of standardized long durationhomicide research.

In this article, we examine the correlates of fear of violence in the cross-media landscape. The study draws on the Finnish National Crime Victim Survey ( n = 6,141, respondents aged 15–74 years). First, we examine from what information and media sources respondents receive information on violent crime. We then examine how consumption of different types of media and information sources on violent crime associates with the contemporary experience of fear of street violence, avoidance behavior due to threat of violence, and perceived threat of terrorism to oneself. We also examine whether this association remains when age, gender, education, past victimization, and economic strain are adjusted for.

Objectives: To examine short-term associations between offending and victimization using daily data on criminal offenses. We also examine the within-individual association between several types of offenses and victimization and see whether incidents closer together in time are more likely reflect revenge motives. Method: We use total data on all victims ( n = 88,106) and offenders ( n = 60,584) in police-reported assaults in Finland during 2007–2009 to examine temporal clustering of the two outcomes. Monthly panel data ( n = 4,886) on offending and victimization are analyzed with fixed-effects regression models, while revenge motives are derived from detailed case descriptions ( n = 299). Results: The risk of violent victimization is higher in months following criminal offending. Although the offending rates directly before and after victimization are low on absolute terms, we find that these rates are higher around the time of victimization. Violent offenses closer to victimization incidents are more likely to include the same parties in opposite roles. Conclusions: Criminal offending increases the risk of victimization in a state-dependent matter. Closer analysis of situational and motivational dynamics of victimization and offending requires temporally detailed data, as a substantial share of the victim–offender overlap is explained by incidents that take place on the same day, complicating the analysis of the temporal sequence of those events.

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.

This study provides an overview of homicide clearance in four West European countries: Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Using data from the European Homicide Monitor, employing similar definitions and uniform coding schemes, this study allowed for unique cross-country comparisons in factors influencing differences in homicide clearance rates. Findings based on homicides occurring in the period 2009–14 revealed overall low homicide rates in all countries, with a wide variety in homicide clearance rates, ranging from 77 percent in the Netherlands to 98 percent in Finland. Results further showed that both event-based as well as victim-based characteristics significantly influenced the likelihood of homicide clearance, suggesting that homicide clearance rates can, for a large part, be attributed to the prevalent types of homicide in each of these European countries.

Due to drastic changes in the contemporary media environment, criminology needs to examine how the experience of violence is shaped by the emerging cross-media context. We conducted a qualitative f...

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.

The few existing studies on the association between debt problems and crime have suggested that the two are correlated, but the causal nature and direction of this association has been unclear. By using longitudinal register data (N = 20,696) from Finland on young adults’ debt default and crime, we examine the potentially reciprocal association between debt problems and crime with both cross-sectional and longitudinal models. Debt problems and crime have a strong association in the data, which persists after controlling for several measures of socioeconomic status. The longitudinal analyses using fixed-effects regression models show that levels of crime are higher during periods of debt enforcement, ruling out stable between-person heterogeneity as the sole cause. The final analysis examining the exact timing of new debt defaults and crime shows signs of a mutually reinforcing association; the rate of newly enforced debt increases in the months preceding the first crime leading to a conviction and continues to increase afterward mostly because of criminal monetary sanctions left unpaid. The conclusion of the analysis is that debt problems have a dynamic association with criminal offending. We discuss the difficult barrier that unpaid debts pose to offenders seeking to desist from criminal activity in the current Finnish context.

Differences in the crime involvement of immigrants and the native population have been a major topic in criminology for decades. This interest stems from the fact that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics of many European countries. Our study compares delinquency among native and immigrant youth in Finland. The analysis is based on the 2012 sweep of the Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study ( N = 8914). The results show that several forms of delinquency were more prevalent among immigrants than among native youth. Multivariate analyses indicate that routine activities and parental control were related to the immigrant youths’ higher risk of active delinquency. After adjusting for a wide range of background variables, the immigrants’ higher risk of delinquency decreased, but remained significant.

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.

AIMS: To examine gradual change in debt problems, divorce and income among men in Finland before and after a first conviction for driving under the influence (DUI). DESIGN AND SETTING: A register-based longitudinal study conducted in Finland between 1999 and 2013. PARTICIPANTS: A nationally representative sample of 70,659 Finnish males born between 1918 and 1983, and a sub-sample of males (n = 1,782) who had their first DUI conviction during 2005-2012. MEASUREMENTS: Descriptive statistics showing the socio-demographic and economic determinants of DUI. The main analysis was based on a longitudinal, within-individual setting. The impact of DUI on debt problems, divorce, and income was analysed using random effects regression models. FINDINGS: DUI offenders were more likely to be younger and to have lower education and income than the non-DUI group. Criminal convictions were also more common among DUI offenders. Debt problems, divorce, and loss of income were more likely after the DUI incident than before. The already increasing level of debt problems accelerated after the incident, and divorce rates increased after the DUI incident, whereas the decrease in income was gradual over the whole observation period. CONCLUSIONS: Among men in Finland, DUI offenses are more common among vulnerable social groups. The first drunk-driving conviction among men in Finland constitutes a significant life event that appears to increase the likelihood of financial problems and divorce. Language: en

Background Individuals with high psychopathy scores are capable of providing valid self-reports on their own personality traits, but there have been no empirical studies of the effect of psychopathic features on responding to sensitive survey questions about specific behaviours. Aims The aim of this study is to investigate any relationship between facets of psychopathy and participants' willingness to report antisocial acts in youth delinquency surveys, controlling for demographic variables known to be associated with response integrity. Methods In a nationally representative sample of 4,855 Finnish mainstream adolescents aged 15–16, honesty of responding was assessed through direct response integrity questions related to violence, property crime and drug use. Psychopathy was measured with the Antisocial Process Screening Device – Self Report (APSD-SR). Results Callous–unemotional traits and, to a lesser degree, narcissistic features were associated with a dishonest response style, although the effect size was modest. Conclusions Although psychopathy does not seem to influence the capability and willingness to report personality traits accurately, it may be associated with endorsing dishonest responses to questions about specific behaviours that have possible repercussions. Our findings suggest that previously observed associations between adolescents' self-reported delinquent behaviour and psychopathic traits may be underestimations of the strength of the effects. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Chapter 4 shifts the focus from young people’s offending to their experience as victims of crime. This chapter presents initial ISRD3 findings on victimization from 27 countries. The chapter presents data for (1) victimization in the previous year and (2) whether the police were notified of this victimization. Patterns of victimization are presented under four headings: “Core crimes” (robbery, theft, and assault; cyberbullying; hate crime; and parental use of physical force). The chapter also shows (incidence-based) rates of police notification of victimization, as well as the reporting frequency per 100 incidents. One of the main findings emerging from the analyses is that police reporting rates do not seem to link primarily to distrust in the police. Chapter 4 also includes some important and novel findings on domestic violence against children, as well as on hate crime victimization.

The ISRD has two distinguishing features as a comparative study of youth crime and victimization: (1) the large number and cultural diversity of participating countries and (2) the explicitly comparative design. This chapter provides an overview of the core data features of the ISRD, including listing of participating countries, sample size, responses rates, and administration type (paper and pencil or online). The chapter further explains sampling procedures used, weighting, questionnaire content, and construction. The chapter concludes with a caution that some of the national differences in results may reflect methodological differences, rather than substantive differences in prevalence and incidence of offending and victimization.

This brief chapter reports on how ISRD3 has incorporated a test of the impact of cultural variability on self-report responses to questions about offending. The results show that concerns about cultural variability (in the social desirability related to admitting delinquent behavior) are empirically supported and that caution is warranted when making direct cross-national comparisons of estimates of offending. It describes the use of the crosswise model as a gauge to test social desirability, and it shows the impact of social desirability on estimates of self-reported offending. The chapter concludes with an argument that self-reports related to victimization are much more useful indicators of the level and nature of crime than self-reported offending. The main conclusion is that there needs to be considerable caution in using self-report data in comparative research because of the validity threats demonstrated.

This introductory chapter presents a brief background to the third round of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), an internationally collaborative study of delinquency among 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. The three core objectives of the ISRD are: (1) to measure the prevalence and incidence of offending and victimization; (2) to test theories about correlates of offending and victimization; and (3) to develop policy-relevant recommendations. It briefly discusses the first pioneering efforts of ISRD1 (1991–1992), the efforts of ISRD2 (2006–2008) to further maximize standardization and to extend the number of participating countries, and the inclusion of additional measures and countries by ISRD3 (2012–present). It provides the context for the presentation of the first results of the emerging international dataset consisting of survey results in 27 countries (n = 62,636).

Today, the Finnish criminologist and sociologist Veli Verkko (1893–1955) is remembered and cited because of ‘Verkko’s laws’, which predict cross-sectional and temporal regularities between homicide rates and patterns. This article describes Verkko’s criminological thought more broadly and situates him in the historical divide between bio-criminology and the rise of sociological environmentalism. In this paradigmatic conflict, Verkko took an unlikely path: while remaining a multiple factor theorist and social environmentalist, he came to see biology as increasingly relevant in the post-war era, at a time when other social scientists were rejecting bio-perspectives. Because of this, he became involved in the controversy over the malleability of human behaviour. Following prior work on institutional influences on the development of human sciences, it is shown that policy demand for a new kind of research influenced the genesis and outcome of this debate. The post-war building of the welfare state promoted re...

Sociological theorists have suggested, at least in Western affluent societies, a societal change toward increasing sensitivity to violence. Possible causes include increasing affluence, security, medical victories over infectious diseases, increasing life expectancy, and feminization of society. A trend toward increasing sensitivity could have implications for understanding crime trends. If some conflicts are newly perceived as violence, this can create a false impression of rising crime, or a crime drop can be rendered invisible. Prior research and new analyses suggest that people in the West have become more sensitive toward violence. There are social differences in sensitivity, and these differences are consistent with theories of increasing sensitivity. Increasing sensitivity is expressed in heightened likelihood of reporting offenses to the police and to the crime victim surveyors.

Domestic violence often remains a hidden crime. After a reform to the Finnish Penal Code in 2011, the police are now required to investigate petty assaults that occur between intimate partners even without the victim’s consent. In the year following the reform, Finland saw a substantial increase in police-recorded domestic violence. Given that actual levels of domestic violence were unlikely to change so dramatically during this short period, the implication is that the coverage of official data on domestic violence improved. This natural experiment allows one to examine whether the distribution of observed offender characteristics changes when the recorded share of incidents increases abruptly. Prior to the reform, low socioeconomic status and criminal background were known to be relatively strong correlates of police-recorded domestic violence. To find out whether the demographic, socioeconomic, and situational correlates of domestic violence perpetration are sensitive to improvement in outcome coverage, the current study uses a 50% sample ( n = 2,976) of all police-recorded cases of domestic violence during 2010–2011. Despite the significant increase in the share of recorded incidents, our results show very little change in average offender characteristics and do not alter the picture of risk factors associated with domestic violence perpetration.

The article presents a quantitative look at the European homicide research published in selected main international journals in the field of social science criminology (SSC) since 2000. Building on our previous, mainly narrative work (Kivivuori et al., 2012), we use search string targeting article titles in selected SSC journals. The aim is to capture the basic features and patterns of homicide research conducted by scholars affiliated with European institutions and departments. Research activity is then examined in terms of its quantity, patterns and trends, with attention to theoretical approaches and emphases. Our analyses suggest that European homicide research is increasing, is relatively concentrated to specific countries with strong homicide research traditions, and shows a rising percentage of female scholars. In terms of method and substance, qualitative and mixed methods appear to be ascendant, and research increasingly focuses on sub-types of homicide rather than on homicide in general. The most frequent topic of special homicide research is intimate partner homicide, with genocide and homicide-suicide studies also drawing European attention. The theoretical traditions of SSC-based homicide research are nearly always acknowledged and often explicitly developed. Social control theory emerges as the most discussed and ascendant theory. In addition to narrative commentary of emerging themes, we describe the ‘uses of theory’ in European homicide research, and detect a fruitful tension between nomothetic and idiographic approaches.

After a high-profile homicide case, there is often discussion in the media on whether or not the killing was caused or facilitated by a psychotropic medication. Antidepressants have especially been blamed by non-scientific organizations for a large number of senseless acts of violence, e.g., 13 school shootings in the last decade in the U.S. and Finland (1). In September 2014, there were more than 139,000 hits from Google for the search terms “antidepressant, homicide”, and more than 1,050,000 hits for the terms “antidepressant, violence”. It is likely that such massive publicity in the lay media has already led a number of patients and physicians to abstain from antidepressant treatment, due to the perceived fear of pharmacologically induced violence.

This article examines whether the relationship between unemployment and criminal offending depends on the type of crime analyzed. We rely on fixed-effects regression models to assess the association between changes in unemployment status and changes in violent crime, property crime, and driving under the influence (DUI) over a 6-year period. We also examine whether the type of unemployment benefit received moderates the link to criminal behavior. We find significantly positive effects of unemployment on property crime but not on other types of crime. Our estimates also suggest that unemployed young males commit less crime while participating in active labor market programs when compared with periods during which they receive standard unemployment benefits. Language: en

In Finland, more than one in four young females and almost one in three young males experienced some type of adversarial police contact in a year. The high prevalence of adversarial police contact among contemporary youth highlights the need to study the nature of the contacts and labelling theory’s hypothesis of control bias. Consequently, we develop the theory’s concept of social visibility to examine differential selection. We draw on a nationally representative youth survey to explore police contacts among youths aged 15 to 16 (N = 5826). The open-ended responses suggested that police interventions typically focus on traffic situations or use of alcohol in public places. Also, we used multivariate logistic regression to examine which factors increase the likelihood of adversarial police contact. We found that a variety of delinquency and heavy alcohol use emerge as strong triggers of getting caught by the police. In addition, male gender, living in a city, having a single father, and low educational aspirations increases the likelihood of police contact, controlling for delinquency, and socio-demographic variables. Our findings seem to be consistent with mixed-model hypothesis, which highlights that both, differential involvement and selection, might operate together. We suggest that even in the Nordic conditions, which is characterised by high social equality, social biases seem to exist and some youth are more socially visible to formal social control than others.

Although research on business crime victimization has increased in recent years, few studies have explained variation in the crime risk of businesses. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of retail premises (N=1197), this study describes the prevalence and correlates of business crime victimization in Finland, using England and Wales as a point of comparison. We subject the Finnish data to theory-driven risk factor analysis, focusing on environmental factors, the influence of which is examined controlling for local socio-economic disadvantage. Indicating that public disorder is a predictor of crimes against retail premises, the findings are consistent with routine activity approach in general and the incivilities thesis in particular.

Research on socioeconomic differences in violent victimization has relied on surveys. Nationally representative register-based data sets, increasingly used in Nordic criminology, have not been used in such research. We analyse socioeconomic differences in violent victimization in Finland using both survey and register-based data, and assess whether these differences vary by severity of violence. The results show that the data source and the inclusivity of the definition of violence affect the observed socioeconomic differences, with differentials being larger for more severe violence in both data sets and in register rather than in survey data. We conclude that the link between socioeconomic status and victimization is unquestionable when the risk of severe violence is studied.

We investigated the prevalence of juvenile weapon carrying and psychosocial and personality-related risk factors for carrying different types of weapons in a nationally representative, population-based sample of Finnish adolescents. Specifically, we aimed to investigate psychopathic-like personality features as a risk factor for weapon carrying. The participants were 15-16-year-old adolescents from the Finnish self-report delinquency study (n = 4855). Four different groups were formed based on self-reported weapon carrying: no weapon carrying, carrying knife, gun or other weapon. The associations between psychosocial factors, psychopathic-like features and weapon carrying were examined with multinomial logistic regression analysis. 9 % of the participants had carried a weapon in the past 12 months. Adolescents with a history of delinquency, victimization and antisocial friends were more likely to carry weapons in general; however, delinquency and victimization were most strongly related to gun carrying, while perceived peer delinquency (antisocial friends) was most strongly related to carrying a knife. Better academic performance was associated with a reduced likelihood of carrying a gun and knife, while feeling secure correlated with a reduced likelihood of gun carrying only. Psychopathic-like features were related to a higher likelihood of weapon carrying, even after adjusting for other risk factors. The findings of the study suggest that adolescents carrying a weapon have a large cluster of problems in their lives, which may vary based on the type of weapon carried. Furthermore, psychopathic-like features strongly relate to a higher risk of carrying a weapon.

This study provides a Finnish replication of a recent Swiss experiment (Walser and Killias: J Exp Criminol 8:17–28, 2012) on the supervision mode effects in computerized delinquency surveys in schools. This study supplements the Swiss study by using individual level randomization and two additional outcome variables: meta-questions of response integrity and incidence-counting heuristics. A total of 924 ninth grade students (15–16 years old) in southern Finland were randomly assigned (at the level of individuals) to supervision either by their teachers or by an external research assistant. Students then responded to an online self-report delinquency survey. Chi-square and t tests were used to compare prevalence levels and means. In both last year and lifetime recall periods, only one offence type (unspecified theft) showed significantly different outcomes, with external supervision yielding a higher prevalence figure. For other offences, no supervision effects were found. When females and males were separately examined, limited evidence of gender-specific supervision effects emerged. Thus, females appear to report more thefts in external supervision while males report more violence in teacher supervision. No statistically significant supervision effects were found in questions probing response integrity and counting heuristics. Using teacher supervision in online self-report delinquency surveys does not appear to compromise the validity of the survey results. The findings thus largely corroborate the results of the earlier Swiss test. How supervision condition interacts with respondent characteristics apart from gender calls for further scrutiny.

Crime victimization surveys are important sources of trend information and provide data for basic criminological research. In recent years, victim surveys have proliferated and their strengths are well known. The aim of this study is to increase the methodological literature on victim surveys by analysing framing effects, defined as the way the survey instrument communicates its topic and aim, especially in terms of the gendered nature of violence. Three experimental frames were applied to independent, random samples of the adult Finnish population: male-to-male violence frame, female-to-male violence frame, and male-to-female violence frame. The impacts of these frames were analysed in relation to two outcome variables: self-assessed propensity to report hypothetical borderline incidents in a victim survey and reporting of prior personal violent victimization. Thus, we utilized measures of both intended survey reporting behaviour and real survey reporting behaviour. The findings indicate that the male-to-female violence frame increases the willingness of the respondents to report borderline cases to survey researchers, regardless of other factors. It also increases the prevalence of reported prior victimizations. The female-to-male frame has a similar but weaker framing effect. The findings are discussed from the point of view of the ‘conversation’ paradigm of survey methods research.

The question as to whether intimate partner homicide (IPH) is committed by average people as opposed to socially disadvantaged persons has both theoretical resonance and practical salience. The gender framework predicts that IPH offenders are socially and individually less disadvantaged than other homicide offenders. The violence framework predicts that IPH offenders resemble other homicide offenders in that they tend to come from socially disadvantaged groups. We examine these perspectives using data on all homicides committed in Finland since 2002 ( N = 836 offenders). The findings indicate that socially disadvantaged people are overrepresented in IPH as in other homicide types. In terms of social correlates, IPH clusters with other homicides in close relations, irrespective of the victim’s gender.

Data from the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study (n = 4,645) were used to examine the influence of mid-adolescent (age 15) school outcomes on late-adolescent (ages 17–19) risk of criminal conviction. Consistent with social-developmental theories of offending, we found that poor academic performance and reduced school attachment increase the risk of criminal conviction independently of pre-existing differences in antisocial propensity and other confounding factors identified in prior research. Moreover, in support of an integrated model, our research suggests that academic performance and school attachment mediate the effects of childhood antisociality and learning difficulties on late-adolescent risk of criminal conviction. The implications of findings for policy and future research are discussed.

Five important changes can be detected in the homicidal crime of Finland and Sweden. From the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth, concurring with the establishing of the modern centralized state, homicide rates dropped significantly. In the long term, the local variation in Swedish homicide rates decreased, probably because of the rise of the centralized state; however, the case was different in Finland, partly because of a less efficient central administration before the twentieth century. During the period 1700–2000, there was a clear social marginalization of lethal violence; this change took place earlier in Sweden than in Finland. There was a relative shift from instrumental (economy-related) to expressive violence. In the twentieth century, concurring with general urbanization, there was a considerable privatization of lethal violence in both countries as homicides moved from public places to private. The social and historical data suggest that homicide participants may have becom...

Research on delinquent behavior has traditionally been a core emphasis of Nordic criminological research. Historically, Nordic cooperation in criminology began with the world’s first ever internationally comparative survey of self-reported delinquency, the Nordic Draftee Research program, 1961–64. Youths of the five Nordic nations tend to manifest relatively similar prevalence levels of delinquent behavior, with a partial exception that Danish adolescents have above-average levels of substance use and property offending. During the 1990s, Danish, Finnish and Swedish surveys revealed a consistent rise in the number of law-abiding youths, a trend explained by a coincidence of multiple social changes: diminishing cohort sizes, the rise of the surveillance society, increasingly conservative and anticrime attitudes among youths, and changing routine activities, some of which may have resulted in crime type displacement (from traditional theft to computer-related crime) instead of overall crime reductio...

Despite decades of research on the association between socio-economic status (SES) and crime, its strength and nature remain contested. Using a unique dataset combining data from several administrative registers with a nationally representative sample of 28,485 19 to 30-year-old Finnish citizens, we examine SES differences in violent offences, property offences and driving while intoxicated. We use multiple measures of SES in order to see what it is in SES that increases crime risk. We also test the strain accumulation hypothesis to find out whether presence of multiple strains increases crime risk disproportionately. The results indicate that, in addition to male gender, SES is strongly associated with all three types of crime, and the predictors are largely similar for all the offence types in question. Long-term unemployment and having only a basic education, in particular, were the most robust predictors of offending. These associations held after controlling for previous criminal involvement as well as other social characteristics, whereas the effect of low income on crime was primarily attributable to prior involvement in crime. Overall, the results imply that there are both causation and selection mechanisms at play. No interactive effect was found for strain accumulation.

This article examines the correlates of self-assessed re-offending probability (SARP) in a sample of Finnish short-term prisoners. The research focuses on the role of factors related to social control when individual self-control is held constant, and explores how selected prison activities relate to SARP. The associations between social control and re-offending probability manifest some erosion when self-control and criminality are factored in, a finding that replicates prior studies. However, several variables capturing a person’s ties to social control institutions remained robust correlates of SARP. Having many siblings, living in a nuclear family during childhood, parental supervision during childhood and youth, and avoiding negative events in adulthood appear to reduce the number of offences projected to the future. In prison, work participation, participation in alcohol abuse treatment, and remorse for past crimes are associated with reduced SARP. We draw on cross-sectional data combining a quantitative survey ( N = 351) and qualitative interviews ( N = 37).

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...