Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a global public health issue often assumed to be associated with gender inequality. The so-called Nordic Paradox, the apparently contradictory co-existence of high levels of IPVAW and of gender equality in Nordic countries, has not been adequately explained. This study explores discussions about how this apparent paradox can be understood among 30 IPVAW professionals working in southern Sweden, through a thematic analysis of focus groups and individual and paired interviews. The analysis highlights complexities of gender (in)equality and its links with IPVAW in Sweden, of relevance for the addressing and prevention of IPVAW.

Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) poses severe threats to women’s health and rights. This study investigates the role of country context and gender equality in shaping individual perceptions of the severity of IPVAW. Multilevel logistic regression analyses of a Eurobarometer survey on attitudes toward IPVAW from 27 EU states showed that male gender, young age, low education, low self-assessed social position and particularly perceiving IPVAW as uncommon were associated with perceiving IPVAW as less severe. The likelihood of perceiving IPVAW as less severe was higher in countries with low gender equality. Between-country variance accounted for 14% of the variability, while country-level gender equality accounted for 22% of the between-country variance. We conclude that efforts toward strengthening perceptions of IPVAW as a severe issue should focus on awareness-raising and on increasing country-level gender equality.

According to the Situational Action Theory, stronger morality inhibits the perception of alternatives to law-breaking action, thus lessening the probability of crime and delinquency. Research indicates that morality might be affected by delinquent peer association and in turn affect criminogenic exposure. This article studies how morality develops during late adolescence using data from the longitudinal project Malmo Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study. Using linear growth modelling, the study finds that a decrease in morality is associated with a simultaneous increase in delinquency peer association. No change in criminogenic exposure was detected. The results are discussed alongside theoretical and methodological implications.

The criminalization of welfare and policing has often been analysed as being indicative of the global rise of a neoliberal political agenda. The current paper examines how governmental power is organized to govern investigators responsible for policing welfare in Sweden. Using empirical illustrations from the Swedish case, it shows how multiple governmental logics are enacted in the context of a broader political will to crack down on welfare fraud. Specifically, it demonstrates how so-called control investigators are tasked to realize a neoconservative agenda. To this end, these investigators are themselves governed using an amalgam of neoliberal and bureaucratic rationalities and technologies. The paper argues that examinations of the articulation of multiple governmental rationalities offer one route for thinking intelligibly about power and criminalization and by extension about the limits of neoliberal rule.

Enforcement intensity towards drug law offences in Denmark has increased since 2004, making Denmark one of the few Western countries that is heading towards a more repressive drug control approach. The aim of this study is to examine patterns and correlates of drug enforcement intensity over time. Policy documents and criminal statistics on drug law offences, from 1996 to 2017, are analysed in the context of the rationality perspective and the theory of policy coherence. Time series analyses and bivariate tests of statistical significance are used to examine enforcement intensity over time, between seasons, and in the gender and ethnic composition of convictions. Three periods are identified, delineated by documents that set forth drug policy aims. From 1996 to 2003, a series of qualitative changes to the legal framework was introduced, followed by a quantitative increase in enforcement pressure from 2004 to 2010 with a focus on Copenhagen. From 2011 to 2017, other regions of the country also increased enforcement. The increased intensity in drug control followed a period of increasing cannabis prevalence rates. The increase in reported minor drug law offences correlated with increased seasonal variations and increased disparity in the gender and ethnicity of convicted individuals. 

There are multiple geographical crime prediction techniques to use and comparing different prediction techniques therefore becomes important. In the current study we compared the accuracy (Predictive Accuracy Index) and precision (Recapture Rate Index) of simply counting crimes: Simple Count with Kernel Density Estimation in the prediction of where people are reported to commit violent crimes (assault and robbery) and property crimes (residential burglary, property damage, theft, vehicle theft and arson), geographically. These predictions were done using a different number of years into the future and based on a different number of years combined to do the crime prediction, in a large Swedish municipality. The Simple Count technique performed quite well in comparison to simple Kernel Density Estimation no matter what crime was being predicted, making us conclude that it may not be necessary to use the more complex method of Kernel Density Estimation to predict where people are reported to commit crime geographically

This study examines the declining crime trend among Swedish adolescents between 1999 and 2017 using data from eight repeated cross-sectional waves of a nationally representative school survey (N = ca. 49,000). We examined to what extent changes in parental monitoring, school bonds, attitudes toward crime, routine activities, and binge drinking were related to the noticeable decline in youth crime. Multilevel modeling was employed for the analysis of temporal trends. We found strong empirical support for our hypotheses, that is, that changes in social bonds, attitudes toward crime, and routine activities were all associated with the decline in youth crime. Routine activities had the strongest explanatory power, and all predictors combined accounted for most of the variance attributed to the decline in youth crime. This study moves research on the crime drop closer to the analysis of social mechanisms by demonstrating that micro-level associations between theoretically relevant, proximal variables, and delinquency account for macro-level change.

The implementation of COVID-19 stay-at-home policies was associated with a considerable drop in urban crime in 27 cities across 23 countries. More stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime. The stay-at-home restrictions to control the spread of COVID-19 led to unparalleled sudden change in daily life, but it is unclear how they affected urban crime globally. We collected data on daily counts of crime in 27 cities across 23 countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. We conducted interrupted time series analyses to assess the impact of stay-at-home restrictions on different types of crime in each city. Our findings show that the stay-at-home policies were associated with a considerable drop in urban crime, but with substantial variation across cities and types of crime. Meta-regression results showed that more stringent restrictions over movement in public space were predictive of larger declines in crime.

Drawing on lifestyle-routine activity theory, this dissertation explores associations between everyday life, crime, and fear of crime among adolescents and young adults. It also examines the operationalisation of the concepts of lifestyle and routine activities, and explores the use of experience methods, via a smartphone application named STUNDA, to collect data about everyday life. Of the four studies conducted, Study I shows that different specific lifestyle measures are of varying relevance for victims, offenders, and victim-offenders, which indicates that no single universal lifestyle feature is of relevance for all outcomes studied. The findings from Study II reveal that spending time with friends in the city-centre is associated with lower levels of fear of crime across months, days, and moments. However, other associations between everyday life variables and fear of crime are inconsistent across these reference periods. Study III, a systematic review of the literature, shows that measures of lifestyle and routine activities differ in the frequency with which they are used in studies on interpersonal victimisation and offending. Illegal activities are often used as lifestyle/routine activity measures in studies on victimisation while unstructured and peer-oriented activities dominate in studies on offending. However, the measures used in the included studies are diverse, which indicates that researchers use a wide range of activities that are intended to measure lifestyle/routine activities. The final paper, Study IV, explores fear of crime in relation to moments of everyday life and finds that specific features of settings, such as being in semi-public and public spaces and on public transport, increase the odds for experiencing fear of crime.

The overall conclusions of the studies point to methodological and theoretical directions for future research. First, research in the field of lifestyle-routine activity theory needs to consider specific and potentially different activities when examining victimisation, offending, and the overlap between these two outcomes. Further, fear of crime research must consider different reference periods, such as months, days and moments, since fear may not only be defined as a more stable trait-like phenomenon but also as a momentary and transitory experience in everyday life. The types of measures used to represent everyday life also require consideration, particularly in terms of the inclusion of lifestyle/routine activity measures that are actually related to criminogenic exposure. For theory more specifically, the implications of the findings point to an overall confirmation of the view that exposure to various environmental circumstances is associated with crime and fear of crime. However, across all of the studies conducted, the findings point to potential weaknesses of the theory. In particular, the lack of an elaborated perspective on individual traits and characteristics limits the explanatory scope of lifestyle-routine activity theory. For instance, people with similar lifestyles still vary in terms of their victimisation, offending, and fear of crime, which necessitates the inclusion of additional individual-level factors that could explain these variations. Future research must thus either modify lifestyle-routine activity theory or open up for other theoretical perspectives that provide a more holistic approach to understanding the role of both environ-mental and individual factors when studying everyday life, crime, and fear of crime.