Homicide in Scandinavia: Long-Term Trends and Their Interpretations

Lindström, Dag

doi:10.1007/978-0-387-74508-4_4

Cited by 1 publication

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“…In Sweden, since 1836, the national statistics included statistics on crimes (Lindström 2008). These statistics were based on court sentences and other findings of guilt, such as summary fines and waivers of prosecution (von Hofer 2000b(von Hofer , 2003.…”

Section: Historical Development Of Conviction Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conviction Statistics as an Indicator of Crime Trends in Europe from 1990 to 2006

Aebi

Linde

2011

Eur J Crim Policy Res

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Convictions statistics were the first criminal statistics available in Europe during the nineteenth century. Their main weaknesses as crime measures and for comparative purposes were identified by Alphonse de Candolle in the 1830s. Currently, they are seldom used by comparative criminologists, although they provide a less valid but more reliable measure of crime and formal social control than police statistics. This article uses conviction statistics, compiled from the four editions of the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, to study the evolution of persons convicted in European countries from 1990 to 2006. Trends in persons convicted for six offences -intentional homicide, assault, rape, robbery, theft, and drug offences-and up to 26 European countries are analysed. These trends are established for the whole of Europe as well as for a cluster of Western European countries and a cluster of Central and Eastern European countries. The analyses show similarities between both regions of Europe at the beginning and at the end of the period under study. After a general increase of the rate of persons convicted in the early 1990s in the whole of Europe, trends followed different directions in Western and in Central and Eastern Europe. However, during the 2000s, it can be observed, throughout Europe, a certain stability of the rates of persons convicted for intentional homicides, accompanied by a general decrease of the rate of persons convicted for property offences, and an increase of the rate of those convicted for drug offences. The latter goes together with an increase of the rate of persons convicted for non lethal violent offences, which only reached some stability at the end of the time series. These trends show that there is no Eur J Crim Policy Res (2012)

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Section: Historical Development Of Conviction Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%