Blog
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Changing a neighborhood: can a crime preventive initiative make a difference?
Crime prevention efforts should be based on empirical evidence, which is why it’s important to track and evaluate their effects over time to understand long-term impact. Over a sever year period, we evaluated a property owner-led collaboration in a disadvantaged neighborhood. Using quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, we analyzed changes in fear of crime, visible…
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Can we strive for justice within surveillance systems? Introducing the JUSST Project
As welfare services embrace data-driven technologies, concerns grow about how these systems impact marginalized communities through surveillance and automation. Can justice truly coexist within these structures? The JUSST Project (2024-2026), funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and hosted by OsloMet, tackles this critical question. By comparing two groups—income support recipients and offenders under electronic monitoring—the…
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On Butchers and Stench: Lived Experiences of Atrocity Crimes
By Carola Lingaas In every conflict, there is at least one protagonist who is nicknamed a ‘butcher’. During World War II, there were numerous Nazi ‘butchers’, for example Klaus Barbie, the ‘Butcher of Lyon’. During the Khmer Rouge regime, Ta Mok was called the ‘Butcher of Cambodia’. The General Ratko Mladić was the ‘Butcher of…
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When life takes a turn for the worst
The premature death of a young person not only causes grief and irreversibly affects their family’s life, it also affects the sense of insecurity in societies. While we know quite a lot about lethal violence, especially from perpetrators’ perspectives, and thanks to quantitative studies, in order for us to prevent homicide in the most effective…
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The reversed gender victimization gap among Swedish youth
Why young Swedish women report higher victimization rates than young men – changing perceptions of sexual offences and crime patterns.
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Within or without: In which system should juvenile offenders be handled?
Unclear boundaries between punishment and rehabilitation when it comes to juvenile offenders can lead to increasing legal uncertainty for the youth. In the midst of this we find the Youth Crime Boards, not formally a criminal court but tangibly close to it, where disparate interests must be accommodated within the same framework.
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Empowering Youth Through Bystander Intervention: A Promising Strategy Against Sexual Assault
In the fight against sexual assault, bystander intervention is emerging as a crucial strategy, empowering young people to act when witnessing potential harassment or assault. But do young people even witness risky situations, and if they do, how and why do they intervene?
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Youth street gangs in social media discourse-who is to blame?
This blog post dives into the public discourses surrounding youth street gangs, where media portrayals, social fears, and policy debates intertwine to shape our understanding of the phenomenon. The blog discusses how online discussions resemble earlier moral panics about youth, and how these can come to shape policies, and influence public attitudes towards immigration, young…
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The new normal? When understaffed prisons becomes the rule rather than the exception
Norwegian prisons have been suffering from a long-term budget and staffing ‘crisis’; the effects of which we observed first-hand during fieldwork on the PriSUD and PRISONHEALTH projects in 2021. We question whether this crisis has become the new normal, and discuss the consequences of said cuts on dynamic security and rehabilitation.
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Challenges of estimating the number of crimes averted through incapacitation
It is often argued that one of the main ways prison may reduce crime is through its incapacitation effect. Incarcerating an offender reduces the individual’s ability to commit further crimes. However, due to methodological challenges, little is known about how many offenses may potentially be averted by sentencing an offender to prison. This newly published…