Blog
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Remand imprisonment in the Nordic penal context: Use, development and consequences
By Emilí Lönnqvist The 2023 NSfK research seminar with the theme “The future of punishment” caught my attention immediately. I viewed it as an important opportunity to share some preliminary findings from my dissertation and the use of remand imprisonment in the Nordic countries. Remand imprisonment, commonly referred to as pre-trial detention, is a procedural…
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Discrepancies in Perceptions of Intimate Partner Violence: Implications for Research and Policy
By Maiju Tanskanen. Many controversies and debates in the field of intimate partner violence (IPV) research stem from contextual variation in whether different situations are defined, perceived, and reported as IPV. Notably, this variation affects representation of IPV in different data sources, as well as societal responses to violence. Definitions of violence vary across time…
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Prison Alternatives in Iceland: Rehabilitation or Budget Concerns?
By Helgi Gunnlaugsson Participating in the NSfK annual research seminar is always a pleasure. Meeting scholars old and new, socializing with colleagues and friends in person is truly an enriching experience. New ties are formed and future research projects planned. We learn about new research findings from academia and practitioners alike. Nordic cooperation at its…
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Challenges in the search of sentencing disparities
By Tiina Malin The theme of this year’s NSfK research seminar was “The future of punishment”. I attended many interesting presentations on, for example, prison studies and the impacts of punishments. My own presentation was about my dissertation project that focuses on sentencing disparities in Finland; thus, I somehow fitted in with the theme. During…
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Turns, waves or layers? Swedish criminal policy and the use of knowledge 1860–2024
By Johan Edman Because there are always experts who are against almost every change, but we can’t have it like that anymore in Sweden. If there is to be a change, changes must be implemented (Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on why the government chose to go against the experts who in a public inquiry (SOU…
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Narrating the Past, Shaping the Present: Military Officers’ Perspectives on Public Security
By Sine Vorland Holen The ongoing war in Ukraine is a stark reminder that armed conflicts in today’s world often unfold among civilian populations. This raises important questions about the role of the military in securing the public in our societies. How military officers’ story and narrate historical events can tell us a great deal…
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Restorative justice as alternative punishment: It’s about being tough on crime in a constructive way
By Christian Gade One of the first things one often “learns” when delving into the literature on restorative justice (victim-offender mediations, restorative justice conferences, circles, etc.) is that it is something radically different from punishment. At the NSfK Research Seminar 2023, I argued two things that contradict with this view. First, that the idea of…
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5-star hotel, with terrible room service? A digital criminology of prisons featured in Google Maps’ reviews
By Maja Vestad, Rose E. Boyle and Marina Hiller Foshaugen There is great power inherent in consumers’ online reviews of establishments, activities and facilities: positive reviews inspire further custom and can affect how commercial actors are ranked by algorithms and search engines, whereas poor reviews keep would-be visitors away. Online reviewing on Google is largely…
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State Compensation and Gender Equality
By Hildur Fjóla Antonsdóttir State compensation schemes for victims of crime are based on the idea that the state has a duty to protect its citizens from crime, and awards compensation as recognition of a sense of public sympathy and social solidarity with victims. While the law is gender neutral, its application reveals a gendered…
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Why has crime become a prevalent social problem in both Chile and Sweden?
By Felipe Estrada I was recently in Chile as a visiting professor and was expecting to find a different conversation on crime and punishment than the Swedish one. The reason for my optimism was the rapid social changes that had occurred during and after the massive social protests in 2019-2020. One of the political consequences…