The European cocaine market has undergone rapid transformations in recent years, with supply increasing and shifting geographically from southern to northwestern ports. These changes have implications for Northern Europe, as shorter distribution routes may affect prices, purity, and consumption. An unstable cocaine market may also increase risks of drug-related systemic violence. This commentary assesses the utility of EU cocaine market indicators by examining trends in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. Using data on price, purity and aggregate use reported to the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA), we evaluate the quality and consistency of these indicators. We found that reporting for wholesale price and purity was highly inconsistent, while retail-level data were more complete, particularly from 2007 to 2023. Wastewater analysis provided a proxy for aggregate use. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the markets in the three countries appear integrated, suggesting a supply route originating in the Netherlands and moving northward. Data deficiencies constrain research and policymaking at a time when a changing market increases risks of instability and violence.

Drawing on data from the fourth International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD4), this chapter compares adolescents’ experiences of victimization and offending in online and offline contexts across 21 countries. While offline victimization (21.5%) and offending (14.8%) remain more prevalent, online harms are widespread: 18% of respondents suffered at least one online victimization and 7.9% admitted to an online offense in the past year. Gender and age patterns diverge—girls are slightly more vulnerable online, boys dominate offending, and 13–15-year-olds show the highest digital misbehavior. Overlap analyses using Loevinger’s H reveal moderate-to-strong links between online and offline victimization (H = 0.39) and even stronger links for offending (H = 0.48), suggesting common lifestyle and routine-activity risk factors across domains. Substantial cross-national variation emerges, yet aggregate connectivity measures (e.g., ICT Development Index) do not account for these differences. The findings underscore the continuing relevance of traditional criminological patterns, the growing importance of digital settings, and the need for integrated theory and policy that address both spheres.

Public place violence has been linked to nighttime economy settings and intoxicated male strangers but it remains understudied what other types of violence are also found in public. In addressing this gap, we apply latent class analysis to develop an inductive event typology of public place violence based on analysis of 500 police reported public assaults from Copenhagen, Denmark. Five event-types of public violence are identified. In addition to the well-known nighttime economy related type, we found classes characterized by excessively violent behaviors; revenge among familiar persons; weapon use and severe victim injuries; and disrespect encounters in everyday contexts. We consider the generalizability of our findings for theories of violence, and discuss implications of our typology for crime prevention.

Objectives: A high number of street dealers operate in the Red Light District in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. To displace the dealers, the Municipality of Amsterdam installed text-based light projections in a street attracting a high number of dealers.

Methods: To evaluate the intervention, we did a pre-post analysis of video footage from two CCTV cameras located in the street. In total, we analyzed 765 one-minute segments of footage from before and after the implementation.

Results: The implementation was followed by a four percentage point reduction in street dealers. However, the estimated effect shows fragileness with wide confidence intervals and a p-value just below 0.05, and a Bayesian robustness analysis suggests that the intervention was not associated with the outcome.

Conclusions: Analyzing CCTV-footage offers a unique avenue for evaluating small scale interventions in open-air drug markets. While we observed a decrease in the presence of dealers, the intervention still needs further validation.

In 1985, Goldstein developed a framework to capture the relationships between drugs and violence in the United States, laying a foundation for future research on drug-related violence. Since then, the rise of synthetic drugs, including in Europe, and the introduction of online drug transactions have drastically changed illicit drug markets and associated violence contexts. Technological innovations, increased globalization, and diversification of drug types call for an expansion of Goldstein’s framework, given the accompanying changes in violence. In this paper, we review the conceptual and empirical research on drugs and violence including contributions from Europe and propose refinements to the tripartite framework. This expanded framework specifies the context of the violence in terms of different stages of the drug route, and access- and consumption-related events at the individual level. This more fine-grained classification will be able to better capture the characteristics of drug-related violence in Europe and other world regions in a globalized era.

Sex workers in Europe are increasingly of nonnational origin. The Schengen cooperation allows internal migration within the European Union, but many migrant sex workers originate from outside the EU. While sex workers are already in precarious positions, nonnationals risk deportation, dependent on their citizenship status, and may have debts to smugglers. Consequently, they may be more likely to work longer hours to increase short-term profits. Using a dataset of sex work advertisements from one Danish website (n = 2,594), we estimate the association between inferred citizenship status and a) advertised hours on shift using ordinary least squares regression, and b) the probability of advertising 24/7 availability using a linear probability model. Compared to Danish sex workers, we find migrants advertise almost twice as many hours on shift and are more likely to advertise 24/7 availability. These results shed light on the inequalities that persist between national and nonnational sex workers.

Speeding in traffic is a key factor in road deaths and accidents. A largescale randomized controlled trial of an online intervention against speeding offenses in northern Denmark is ongoing. Preliminary quantitative results were presented at ESC 2023 and the final results will be ready by 2025. This study aims at improving our understanding of the theoretical mechanisms that influence speeding behavior. To improve the effectiveness of the intervention, we interviewed potential future participants about underlying beliefs related to speeding as part of the development of the intervention as well as people who had completed the intervention. Pre-intervention study consists of 24 semi-structured interviews, evenly distributed on sex, severity of speeding violation (over/under 30% of legal limit), and geography (town/country). Post-intervention study consists of 32 semi-structured interviews, selected from 240 participants in the intervention, oversampling the most serious speed offenders, in terms of their assessed likelihood of speeding again. Using directed content analysis, we examined participant’s motivations for speeding, highlighting the mechanisms in the theory of planned behavior, in terms of costs and benefits. The pre-intervention interviews assessed behavioral beliefs on the advantages of speeding concerned saving time, avoiding boredom, while the shame of potential criminal sanction was a cost. Normatively, participants believed almost everyone speeds, and that it is mostly unacceptable in urban areas, particularly in the vicinity of schools.S peed limits were seen as guidelines, necessary to curb “idiots”. Control beliefs pertain to work-related stress, low risk of apprehension, and habits. The perceived costs of speeding increase with age, and when (others) children are in the vehicle. The post-intervention interviews were generally favorable to the intervention design, particularly the surprising information of lack of efficacy of speeding. Interviewees generally expected to reduce their speeding following the intervention.

The cryptomarket ecosystem has become increasingly volatile and fragmented with sites shutting down on short notice. Displacement to new marketplaces is tricky when the original location was domestically oriented. We examine the spatial and temporal displacement of 83 Swedish vendors in the aftermath of the Flugsvamp 3.0 shutdown. Vendors rejected the successor Flugsvamp 4.0 and moved to German-run Archetyp Market. Using quantitative cross-sectional data from Archetyp Market we measure bivariate correlations between the temporal displacement and status-related variables. We found moderately strong correlation between vendors' number of sales per day and the order of their relocation to Archetyp. We also examined cryptomarket discussion forums and blogs during the time of the Flugsvamp 3.0 shutdown. This qualitative data supported the finding that migration choices of high-status vendors inspired others to follow.

Based on previous research, members of street gangs are more likely to be both perpetrators and victims of crime. In addition, many known risk factors seem to accumulate for street gang- affiliated youth. However, the importance of street gang affiliation seems to go beyond, for example, having criminally active friends. In this presentation, we utilize representative city samples collected from Nordic adolescents (aged 13–17) to investigate the degree to which theory-based criminological risk factors explain the link between street gang membership and criminal behavior and victimization experiences. Our analysis is based on Nordic data collected as part of the fourth International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD4) and logistic regression modelling utilizing the KHB decomposition method. The Eurogang measurement is used to identify adolescents’ street gang membership. In our empirical analysis, we examine the criminal behavior and victimization experiences among gang-affiliated and non-gang adolescents, and how key criminological theories help to understand the connection between adolescent street gangs and crime. In addition, we compare whether studied risk factors play a different role for criminal behavior and victimization experiences.    

Law enforcement in Sweden, and several other European countries, gained access to the content of chats between users of encrypted PGP-phone services. The contents of the chats led to the prosecution of members from 60 criminal groups for aggravated drug offenses, homicides, and more. I use the contents of court documents from 146 lower court and 85 higher court cases, to map the aggravated drugs offenses and violence committed by each group. For the drug offenses, I describe severity of offending, and detail which drug types each group sold. For the violence, I count the types of violence, with a focus on the homicides they committed, planned, and had others commit on their behalf. This material constitutes a more representative sample of criminal group offending than usual because the evidence was not from police-initiated investigations, that could result in a sample of less-capable offenders.