Delinquency Research in the Nordic Countries

Abstract

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 reduction. Reviewed articles in core journals reveal that focal concerns of Nordic delinquency researchers have been social problems–related research, the question of generality versus specialization of delinquency, longitudinal research in individual-level risk factors, methodological research, and research on the social causation of delinquency.