Swedish Crime Research Articles

Assessing the Reversed Gender Gap in the Swedish Crime Survey: Reasons Why Young Women Report Higher Victimization Rates Than Young Men During the Period 2009 to 2016

Self-reported victimization among young women in the Swedish Crime Survey increased during the early- to mid-2010s, resulting in a gender gap, with young women reporting 10% to 15% higher victimization rates than young men. In this study, we use multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to assess whether the increase in victimization rates is due to declines in measurement equivalence across different cohorts of young women during the period 2009 to 2016. The results show cohort differences in how young women interpret the victimization items in the Swedish Crime Survey, especially with regard to the item about sexual victimization. The results show that the increasing victimization rates are likely the result of changes in perceptions about sexual offences, rather than an actual increase.

Swabbing Dogs and Chauffeuring Pizza Boxes

This paper discusses the alignment work that Swedish crime scene technicians perform at the crime scene. It takes as its point of departure the understanding that the criminal justice system is a collaboration of very different epistemic cultures with at times different understandings of “the same” forensic evidence and its production. Nonetheless, the collaboration and the legal security of forensic evidence depends on knowledge in the form of forensic evidence(-to-be) moving easily and stably through it, despite epistemic differences. One way of attaining such stable movement, the article argues, is the crime scene technicians’ alignment work when they recover and package traces from the crime scene – for example body fluids, fingerprints, and fibers – for transport to the forensic science laboratory. Their crime scene alignment work, it shows, is not only a core part of the crime scene technicians’ contribution to the collaborative production of forensic evidence, it is also a source of professional pride, identity, and community for them. Thus, the crime scene technicians’ alignment work is not only important for the movement of knowledge through the Swedish criminal justice system, but is also an integral part of their professional self-understanding.

Allegories of an Embattled Public: The Red Thread of the Modern Swedish Crime Novel

Allegories of an Embattled Public: The Red Thread of the Modern Swedish Crime Novel

Imágenes del norte: un análisis de cubiertas de algunas novelas negras suecas en traducciones al griego y al español

This study is an analysis of the book cover images of a selection of Swedish crime literature, published in Greece and the Spanish-speaking world in the period of 2000-2017. Covers are crucial to the paratextual signal system (Genette, 1991); departing from theories on paratext within translation studies, we aim to compare the original book covers to the covers of the translated volumes. Do the Greek and Spanish book markets emphasise the stereotypical images of the North that have been identified in studies on borealism (Chartier, 2008)? The image covers of the original and the translated editions were examined by means of a content analysis, complemented by an empirical study. The examination of the sample did not unambiguously indicate that the translated editions draw more heavily on the Nordic origin. Similarly, not all covers of the translations revealed belonging to the crime genre.

Comment on K\xe4rrholm et al. \u201cDesigning the Swedish Crime Harm Index: an Evidence-Based Strategy\u201d

QuestionIs the Swedish Crime Harm Index as presented and corrected in this Journal as reported by Kärrholm et al. Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing (2020a, b) a valid method for studying the long-term development of crime and of the harm caused by crime?DataCited publications in this journal, Swedish crime statistics, and other evidence on historical changes in Swedish crime reporting.MethodsDocumentation of the ways in which crime counting in different categories has changed over time in Sweden.FindingsThe authors do not seem to have considered important aspects of the way the Swedish crime statistics are assembled. An overestimation of the increase in cases of homicide and of the penalty value of offenses that do not usually result in custodial sentences are two examples. The authors also fail to consider legislation that criminalizes previously unpunished (harmful) behavior.ConclusionThe historical CHI, as it has been constructed by Kärrholm et al. is not an appropriate method for studying the long-term development of crime and of the harm caused by crime. In a time of net-widening and increasing punitiveness in the justice system, the CHI will show an increase even with no change in actual crime behavior. A simple measure of the current harm caused by crime may be useful for short-term analysis, planning, and the evaluation of police efforts, but it is inadequate as a means of studying the longitudinal development of the crime problem. In the calculation of CHI, harm caused by crimes that do not lead to imprisonment should also be included.

Swedish rape offenders — a latent class analysis

Sweden has witnessed an increase in the rates of sexual crimes including rape. Knowledge of who the offenders of these crimes are is therefore of importance for prevention. We aimed to study characteristics of individuals convicted of rape, aggravated rape, attempted rape or attempted aggravated rape (abbreviated rape+), against a woman ≥18 years of age, in Sweden. By using information from the Swedish Crime Register, offenders between 15 and 60 years old convicted of rape+ between 2000 and 2015 were included. Information on substance use disorders, previous criminality and psychiatric disorders were retrieved from Swedish population-based registers, and Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used to identify classes of rape+ offenders. A total of 3 039 offenders were included in the analysis. A majority of them were immigrants (n = 1 800; 59.2%) of which a majority (n = 1 451; 47.7%) were born outside of Sweden. The LCA identified two classes: Class A — low offending class (LOC), and Class B — high offending class (HOC). While offenders in the LOC had low rates of previous criminality, psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders, those included in the HOC had high rates of previous criminality, psychiatric disorders and substance use disorders. While HOC may be composed by more “traditional” criminals probably known by the police, the LOC may represent individuals not previously known by the police. These two separated classes, as well as our finding in regard to a majority of the offenders being immigrants, warrants further studies that take into account the contextual characteristics among these offenders. Key points Rape, aggravated rape, attempted rape or attempted aggravated rape (rape+) are increasing in Sweden. The majority of those convicted of rape+ are immigrants. LCA identifies two classes of rape+ offenders: LOC and HOC.

An Economic Instrument to Reduce the Crime Rate in Sweden

Objectives
 Crime is one of the most important social problems, affecting public safety, children’s development, and adult socioeconomic status. The Naturally Optimised Revenue Demand in Communities, the NORDIC model was applied to reduce the crime rate.
 Methods
 The NORDIC model that formed the basis of my study, was adapted to crime prevention. The approach was tested in a realistic case study on the crime rates in Sweden.
 Results
 Governments obtained a tool to monitor, manage, and evaluate criminality. End-users including law enforcement authorities and politicians could also use the tool to redesign the crime policy. The launched model produced constructed shadow costs to induce economic incentives to reduce the crime rate. The model considered the public’s awareness of the crime.
 Conclusions
 This paper introduced a practical, economic instrument for improved management of the crime rates. The NORDIC model could be used to reduce the Swedish crime rates and its danger to health as well as to raise the public’s awareness of crime issues.

Deadly violence in Sweden: Profiling offenders through a latent class analysis

BackgroundSweden has in recent years witnessed increasing rates of firearm-related violence and homicide, which has contributed to increased rates of deadly violence. Attempts to profile offenders committing such crimes are of major importance, because such efforts may contribute to better preventive measures. We therefore aimed to study the characteristics of individuals convicted and/or suspected of homicide, attempted homicide, preparation to commit homicide as well as conspiration to commit homicide (for simplicity called homicide+) in Sweden. MethodsBy using information from the Swedish Crime Register and the Swedish Criminal Suspect Register, individuals being 15–60 years old and convicted and/or suspected of homicide+ between 2000 and 2015 were included in the study. Using these registers and also other population and health care registers, information on previous criminality, substance abuse, and psychiatric disorders were added to the Latent Class Analysis (LCA) that was used to identify latent classes of individuals convicted and/or suspected for homicide+. In addition, several individual variables were added for validation purposes. ResultsA total of 14,466 individuals were included in the analysis. The majority were male (n = 12,802; 88.5%) and Swedish-born with Swedish-born parents (n = 8247; 57.0%). The LCA identified three classes where Conviction Class (CC) contained mostly convicted individuals whereas Mixed Class A (MCA) and Mixed Class B (MCB) contained almost equal rates of both convicted and suspected individuals. The CC was characterized by individuals with low rates of previous criminality, substance abuse and psychiatric disorders. The MCA and the MCB were characterized by individuals with higher rates of previous criminality, substance abuse, and psychiatric disorders as well as lower education and worse economy in comparison with the CC. ConclusionWhile MCA and MCB may be constituted by “traditional” criminals often well known by the police and/or the social authorities, the CC was mainly constituted by convicted offenders who may more easily escape the radar of the authorities.

Correction to: Designing the Swedish Crime Harm Index: an Evidence-Based Strategy

The graphic for Figure 3 appeared with the caption for Map 1, and the graphic for Map 1 appeared with the caption for Figure 3.

Designing the Swedish Crime Harm Index: an Evidence-Based Strategy

Research QuestionWhich method for deriving a Crime Harm Index (Policing 10:171–183, 2016) for Sweden from criminal justice sources offers the best evidence for providing a sensitive indicator of differences in harm levels across offence categories?DataThe number of days of imprisonment for each offence category associated with five different kinds of scales were extracted and compared: consensus by an expert panel of judges, the statutory maximum penalties, statutory minimum penalties, the average of maximum and minimum penalties and the average of actual sentences imposed in a recent time period for each crime type. Unlike the UK, for which the Cambridge Crime Harm Index draws on sentencing guidelines, Sweden has no such guidelines to offer.MethodsThe data were compared for sensitivity defined as the difference in length of imprisonment days between high and low severity crimes, as well as other characteristics of the data sources.FindingsGiven the available alternatives, the sentencing data average of actual sentences handed down by crime type provided the greatest reliability and sensitivity across the penalties for offences of high and low severity. Applying that method to both crime trends and crime mapping produces substantially different results from counting all crimes with equal weight and can be used by police and others to allocate resources with greater precision in relation to harm prevention.ConclusionsOn both empirical and normative grounds, the average sentences in a recent time period for each crime category provides the most sensitive and democratic method for establishing an officially recognized Swedish Crime Harm Index.

Adapting social change: Swedish crime fiction as a medium for system correction

Abstract Nordic Noir’s progenitor The Man on the Balcony from 1967 critiques social democracy from a Marxist viewpoint. The novel’s 1993 film adaptation, however, reuses the same crime to challenge neo-liberal globalization. From a story perspective, this is a drastic deviation from ideological fidelity. But a systems perspective shows that the adaptation adheres to functional fidelity for crime fiction as a medium for social discourse. By examining how the two works engage their respective eras’ contemporary issues, we see how Nordic Noir has become a mediator of error correction for Sweden as a social system. Adaptations are therefore expected to show greater fidelity to format than to content, which a systems approach can help facilitate. This perspective also suggests that our nation states – as we lose shared arenas for cultural discourse – will adapt less effectively to changes because it becomes harder to agree on what is real and what is fake.

Migrants and Crime in Sweden in the Twenty-First Century

In 2005, the Swedish Crime Prevention Agency published a report about the link between immigration and crime. Since then, no comprehensive study has been conducted even though Sweden has experienced a large influx of migrants in combination with a rising crime rate. This study conducted by Göran Adamson and Tino Sanandaji is the first purely descriptive scientific investigation on the matter in fifteen years. The investigation (from 2002 to 2017) covers seven distinct categories of crime, and distinguishes between seven regions of origin. Based on 33 per cent of the population (2017), 58 per cent of those suspect for total crime on reasonable grounds are migrants. Regarding murder, manslaughter and attempted murder, the figures are 73 per cent, while the proportion of robbery is 70 per cent. Non-registered migrants are linked to about 13 per cent of total crime. Given the fact that this group is small, crime propensity among non-registered migrants is significant.

The Journalist as a Detective: The Media Insights and Critique in Post-1991 American, Russian and Swedish Crime Novels

ABSTRACTToday it often happens that the protagonist in crime fiction is a journalist—for instance, in the globally spread sub-genre of Nordic noir. This article examines what readers can learn about journalism by comparing crime fiction (a widely popular genre fostering society critique) from Russia, Sweden, and USA. These countries with significantly different press traditions have in the post-1991 era been involved in transformations of the media landscapes which have led to a public distrust in traditional media. We approach these novels as a form of adult media education and thereby as a resource for the reader to develop a critical thinking about journalism. The novels under consideration are permeated with transnational understandings and provide a rich ground for reflections around challenges for finding the truth, such as news-making as a male-dominated activity, journalism as a publicity arena, and an accelerating news environment (i.e., information overload paired with a competition for immediate reporting) as a threat to investigative journalism. The struggling, truth-seeking protagonists can be understood as an answer to a widespread cultural anxiety about journalism’s questioned authority as a truth-telling occupation.

Swedish crime scene technicians: facilitations, epistemic frictions and professionalization from the outside

ABSTRACT This article investigates the role of crime scene technicians in the Swedish criminal justice system, and particularly how Swedish crime scene technicians not only examine crime scenes but also facilitate the criminal justice system’s joint production of forensic evidence. It proposes thinking about the criminal justice system as a conglomeration of epistemic cultures, that is, of communities with different ways of producing and understanding forensic evidence. Such a perspective makes it possible to understand interprofessional frictions as epistemic frictions as well as to draw attention to the facilitations, mediations and translations that crime scene technicians perform. This perspective also makes it possible to illuminate how the crime scene technicians’ professionalization – a professionalization from the outside – affects both their future crime scene work and their facilitations.

The internationalization of Sjöwall and Wahlöö

This paper aims to illustrate the pattern of internationalization of Scandinavian Noir, the popular trend that succeeded in permeating popular culture in recent years. In doing this, we have chosen as starting point the now famous Swedish crime fiction duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. This paper attempts, on the one hand, to demonstrate that their popularity is not merely a matter of critical consensus, but that it can be backed up by empirical data, and on the other hand, that the recent revival of Scandinavian crime fiction pays homage to the two and acknowledges their contribution by critically reassessing them and retranslating them to other languages. The present quantitative research aims at showing that their internationalization also points to a shift in European cultural trends the likes of which has been noted by Pascale Casanova in her World Republic of Letters, but not empirically demonstrated.

Från behandling till hårdare tag? En kritisk analys av högervågsargumentet inom svensk kriminalpolitik

In this article I address the question of whether there has been a punitive turn in Swedish crime policy or not. Since the punitive turn is connected to the downfall of the rehabilitative ideal, and to what David Garland has termed penal welfarism, I make my argument with reference to these phenomena in Sweden. I claim that there were two rationales behind the penal welfare state and the rehabilitative ideal in Sweden: a social liberal rationale built on paternalism and interventionism, and a social democratic rationale built on Marxist class analysis. My argument is that while penal welfarism is still operating in Sweden, the social liberal rationale has been discarded. This means that the social democratic rationale built on Marxist class analysis is now the single dominating force behind Swedish penal welfarism. The argument for a punitive turn in Sweden therefore has no support.

Organisational exceptions as vehicles for change: collaborative strategies, trust, and counter strategies in local crime prevention partnerships in Sweden

ABSTRACT Enhanced collaboration is among the most common strategies in Swedish crime prevention. This includes multi-agency, cross-professional work and also coordinated activities between public authorities and civil society, often in the framework of a partnership approach. The social services bear the main responsibility for setting up and facilitating this collaboration. In this article, two crime prevention programmes in Gothenburg are analysed together. Both targeted gangs and social disturbances, and both used independent coordinators, mainly social workers, as key holders of the intervention strategy. The projects were investigated using an ethnographic mixed-method approach, where 51 interviews with stakeholders in the partnerships provide the main data used for the analysis. The interaction between these free-standing coordinators (labelled organisational exceptions) and the involved stakeholders reveals an intricate interplay of strategies and counterstrategies used either to evoke change and facilitate joint work or to resist intrusive actions on the part of the coordinators. By understanding the different logics of strategic and operative work in relation to the use of systematic or unsystematic data, as well as the need for the coordinator to gain legitimacy, a fundamental paradox in partnership approaches is indicated; in the process of obtaining a legitimate platform for change, the coordinators risked losing the contributions this platform was about to make.

Swedish Crime Fiction and Study Abroad: Literature, Politics and the Foreigner

This paper highlights how to use Swedish crime fiction in the classroom to teach politics, especially issues related to immigration and the role of being “foreign”. Furthermore, the paper explores how Swedish crime fiction can be incorporated into a study abroad course, examining one such study abroad – known as W’International – on our campus. I argue that Swedish crime fiction novels make for a perfect venue to explore an array of political problems and challenges, and a palatable way for students unfamiliar with Sweden or crime fiction to relate to real-world issues.

The Downfall of the Rehabilitative Ideal and the Establishing of a New Political Legitimacy in Swedish Crime Policy: 1965 to 1989

The downfall of the rehabilitative ideal is considered a decisive episode if we want to understand the changes that have transpired in crime policy the last three to four decades. In Sweden, the downfall followed abruptly on the final establishing of individual prevention as theoretical bases for crime policy by the enactment of a new penal code in 1965. This paper follows the trajectory of the downfall in Sweden by doing a genealogy thereof. The purpose is to contribute to a more empirically developed understanding of the course of Swedish crime policy during the formative years of the 1970s to the early 1990s. Firstly, the paper addresses the topic by examining the scholarly critique that paved the way for the downfall of the rehabilitative ideal. Secondly, the paper analyses the political handling of the downfall and the consequence this had for policy. Methodological this is done by way of genealogy exploring the historical pedigree of present-day crime policy in Sweden, not as a linear development, but as plural and sometimes contradictory pasts. Theoretical the paper aims to analyze the trajectory by way of a governmentality perspective, i.e. it focuses on crime policy as a means of governing life and the population, thus exploring the different forms governing takes.

The role of symbolic politics in exceptional crime policy debate: a study of the 2014 Swedish general election

ABSTRACTSymbolic politics are often considered to be closely linked to an alarmist rhetoric, as well as to punitive crime policy initiatives. This article explores the symbolic dimension of the Swedish crime policy debate. Since Sweden is frequently depicted as an antithesis to punitive Anglophone societies, exploring symbolic politics in this setting might expand our understanding of what symbolic statements may consist of. The article analyses the electoral campaign preceding the Swedish general election of 2014, with the aim of identifying which symbolic statements occupy a central position in the debate through the use of a qualitative content analysis. This analysis reveals an ambiguous political rhetoric, comprising morally and emotionally charged condemnatory statements about getting tough on crime, as well as reformist and restrained references to expert knowledge and long-term solutions. On the one hand, these reformist statements strengthen the image of Swedish crime policy as being based on ideals such as rationality and humanity. On the other, they also serve to legitimize and obscure penal expansion.