Blog
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“Nobody wants queues” – Balancing the imperatives of security and trade at global hubs
By Martin Nøkleberg At the start of this year’s summer travel season, the European aviation industry faced disruptions and travel chaos. There are numerous factors contributing to the many delayed and cancelled flights and the hours-long queues for check-in and security controls. During the COVID-19 pandemic, airports and industry stakeholders, laid off tens of thousands…
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Police in the urban peripheries of the welfare state
By Kıvanç Atak Urban segregation and neighborhood disadvantage pose dire challenges to the welfare state ideals of social justice and equality. In Sweden, few institutions have taken as much attention as the police recent years, for better or worse, concerning the question of what should be done about the problems in relatively isolated and underserved…
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How to improve interpreter-mediated child interviews? Perceptions and experiences of forensic interviewers and interpreters
By Linnea Koponen When children are suspected having experienced or witnessed crime, such as abuse or maltreatment, they are often being interviewed by a police employee in a child forensic interview. We know from decades of research that children as young as 3-year-old can provide reliable testimonies if interviewed in an encouraging and non-leading way…
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Could it be my son? – Strategic himpathy work in rape trials
By Sara Uhnoo To investigate the effects of the new Swedish consent-based rape legislation on legal reasoning and practice, Åsa Wettergren, Moa Bladini, and I have observed rape trials, collected judgements, and interviewed around 70 judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and victim’s counsels. During the interviews it struck us that they often referred to how their…
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Prison time is not of the essence
By Enes Al Weswasi After decades of declining numbers of offenders sentenced to prison in Sweden, the trend in recent years instead conveys the opposite: the number of inmates and the average sentence length is increasing. Consequently, the Swedish prison and probation Service predicts a 40% increase in prison capacity by 2030. The influx of…
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COVID and Crime Trends in Finland
By Matti Näsi It has been little over two years since the beginning of global Covid-19 pandemic. Although it does appear that we may be on the winning side of things, the consequences and disruptions caused by the pandemic were massive. In Finland, lockdown in the spring of 2020 meant significant restrictions on restaurants, social…
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Negotiating care, post-trafficking needs and gender in understanding help-seeking behaviour of trafficked victims: a case study of Finland and Sweden
By Polina Smiragina-Ingelström “[They are] not ideal victims of crime, especially when not trafficked for other reasons than sexual, so the social services don’t want to deal with them, they can’t relate to their experience as being victimizing. […] not everyone feels or understands that they are victims.” This concern was expressed by one of…
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The Idea of Crisis: Reflections from the 2022 NSfK Research Seminar
by Elin Jönsson As soon as I read the theme for this year’s NSfK Research Seminar – “Crime and Crisis in the North: Past, present and future” – I knew I had to apply. But I also knew that if I would be granted a spot at the seminar, my presentation would not fully adhere…
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Current controversies in Nordic intimate partner violence research
by Maiju Tanskanen Some repeated empirical findings and general criminological notions, such as the associations between various types of crime and the victim–offender overlap, remain relatively overlooked in Nordic intimate partner violence (IPV) research. Understanding the full ramifications of the phenomenon may require challenging some prevalent assumptions on the nature of IPV. In some research…
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Rape myths are prevalent among young Danes
by Sarah van Mastrigt 11,800 women are subjected to rape or attempted rape annually, according to Danish victim surveys. A new analysis from Aarhus University shows that among young people, and especially 16-20-year-old males, stereotypes and erroneous notions about rape abound. That’s a problem, as previous research suggests that rape myth acceptance can contribute to…