Jerzy Sarnecki

The Phenomenology of Specialization of Criminal Suspects

A criminal career can be either general, with the criminal committing different types of crimes, or specialized, with the criminal committing a specific type of crime. A central problem in the study of crime specialization is to determine, from the perspective of the criminal, which crimes should be considered similar and which crimes should be considered distinct. We study a large set of Swedish suspects to empirically investigate generalist and specialist behavior in crime. We show that there is a large group of suspects who can be described as generalists. At the same time, we observe a non-trivial pattern of specialization across age and gender of suspects. Women are less prone to commit crimes of certain types, and, for instance, are more prone to specialize in crimes related to fraud. We also find evidence of temporal specialization of suspects. Older persons are more specialized than younger ones, and some crime types are preferentially committed by suspects of different ages.

Criminal Networks in Stockholm

This study employs a network analytical approach to examine co-offending. The aim is to test whether a network perspective can help with new approaches and a better insight into the character of juvenile crime in a metropolitan area.

Keeping the Balance Between Humanism and Penal Punitivism: Recent Trends in Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice in Sweden

Geographically Sweden is one of the margin members of the European Union. Sweden is also rather sparsely populated with a total population of 9 millions. During the last decades every cohort of children/juveniles consist of approximately 100,000. Since the age of legal responsibility in Sweden is 15 years and special legislation still applies for juveniles until they reach 21 years, the juvenile population could be said to consist of around 600,000. It is a well-established fact that the number of young people who have been reported for committing a crime has increased dramatically since World War II. This is not unique to Sweden and is often the same elsewhere in Europe (Estrada, 1999a). It is not unusual to see this change as continuous, that young people are becoming “worse and worse”. An attitude like this obviously affects the measures that are involved in the development of juvenile crime. This report will present the measures against juvenile crime from a criminal (justice) policy perspective and highlight how this policy has changed over the past three decades. The report begins with a general background describing the history of the Swedish juvenile justice system. Thereafter the trends in juvenile delinquency1 are analysed and the responses to crimes that are taken by the Swedish juvenile system are described in more detail. Finally we discuss how the current trends can be understood.

The Swedish Mujahideen: An Exploratory Study of 41 Swedish Foreign Fighters Deceased in Iraq and Syria

ABSTRACT This study analyzes the demographics, criminality, and network relations of forty-one deceased Swedish foreign fighters. Our results show that most of the deceased Swedish foreign fighters were on average just under 26 years old when they died. Concerning network relations, nineteen out of the forty-one foreign fighters had at least one relationship (next-of-kin or friend) with another deceased foreign fighter. Two thirds were previously suspected of at least one crime. Based on our results, we argue that more attention needs to be given to tertiary and secondary prevention directed toward foreign fighter hubs.