Crime, Drugs, and Suicide in the Scandinavian Countries Since 1950

Abstract

This chapter contains a description of crimes and sanctions, alcohol and narcotics abuse, and suicide in the Scandinavian countries since the 1950s. Men such as Adolphe Quetelet and Andre-Michel Guerry in that period laid the foundation for the tradition of moral statistics, whereupon national crime statistics were started in several Western nations. The analysis of property crimes will be limited to theft, which, along with traffic crimes, is by far the most commonly reported crime. The finding of a lack of increase is also supported by more qualified measures of drug use, such as use of drugs in the past month or injection of drugs. Swedish policy became one of controlling drugs on the streets and in Finland a number of psychoactive substances were criminalized. The fall in the Swedish suicide rate since 1971 is probably affected by the introduction of the category “controversial cases” into the WHO causes-of-death classification.