Noora Ellonen

Hesitation as a System Response to Children Exposed to Violence

The article aims to explore how certain social welfare, health and education institutions and the police respond to children exposed to violence. In particular, it focuses on how the institutions interact with each other in terms of informing one another about violence targeted at children or the suspicion of it, as suggested by present Finnish legislation. Based on interviews with 33 practitioners, the analysis highlights hesitation as a common response, especially in cases of mild violence and uncontested “evidence”. Hesitation is against the present legal norms and reflects some lack of knowledge of professional duties. However, the rationalities for hesitation relate, especially, to the agency and profession-based understanding of the principle of the best interests of the child, and they may include some practice-based understanding of the system. Thus, hesitation as a system response should not be ignored but explored in more detail.

‘Crime or not?’ – police officers' perceptions of disciplinary violence, its criminalisation and its investigation

Disciplinary violence against children is banned by law in Finland. According to the Finnish Criminal Code, acts of disciplinary violence fall under the category of assault. In most cases, disciplinary violence fulfils at least the essential elements of petty assault. Despite these efforts, disciplinary violence is still prevalent. Previous research has also shown that authorities find it difficult to identify cases of disciplinary violence and intervene in them. Moreover, it has been found that the police culture and police officers interpretations of policing influence police officers attitudes and actions. Thus, the objective of this article is to examine what police officers specialised in investigating crimes against children think about the criminalisation of disciplinary violence, how they perceive disciplinary violence and whether, in their opinion, cases of disciplinary violence require a crime process. It also examines how these police officers perceive the investigation of suspected cases of disciplinary violence. The study was conducted by semi-structured focus interviews face-to-face with 12 police officers in Finland. It was found that disciplinary violence and its criminalisation provoked different opinions among the police officers. Despite their own opinions, however, the police officers knew that it was their role to investigate these cases. It was also found that, at least to some extent, police officers perceptions of disciplinary violence are related to their actions in practice.

Association between drinking and victimisation among Finnish adolescents: estimating the extent of the spurious effect

Aims This paper examines how the frequency of adolescent drinking predicts total violent victimisation (while sober or intoxicated) vs. victimisation while sober. Background The general correlations between alcohol use and violence among adolescents are well established. However, the nature of the association is less clear. While some findings show that drinking predicts violence in general, others claim that drinking predicts violence only when the offender is intoxicated. If the latter is true, the association appears causal rather than spurious. Recent research led by Felson has examined the issue with respect to adolescent offenders. The purpose of our study is to apply the same methodological approach to adolescent victimisation. Data The analysis is based on data of 9th graders (N= 5,775) in the Finnish Child Victim Survey 2008. Results Our findings suggest that there are gender differences in adolescents’ alcohol use and victimisation. Among frequently-drinking boys the high risk of victimisation is attributable to violent situations while intoxicated. Among girls the connection between the frequency of drinking and victimisation seemed mostly spurious, as the girls who consumed alcohol often were victimised also when sober.

Parents’ Perceptions of Answering a Survey on Violence Against Children:

The effects of participation in research is an important ethical question in studies involving human participants. In research concerning violence, the common presumption is that participation is especially harmful for those who have personally experienced violence. In this article, parents’ perceptions of answering a violence-related survey are analyzed based on free-text comments. A total of 3,170 parents responded to the survey about their violent behavior toward their child (ages 0-12), and 45% (2,047) of those reflected on their perceptions of answering the survey. These answers are analyzed using a thematic analysis. In addition to describing the perceptions, the associations between perceptions and experiences of violence are analyzed. The vast majority of the participants perceived participating in answering as being positive. Negative perceptions, such as distress, were also reported, but these perceptions were mostly reported together with positive perceptions, especially among those who personally had experienced violence.

Comparing trends in infanticides in 28 countries, 1960–2009

The term ‘infanticide’ refers to the homicide of a child younger than one year old. In this article, we describe infanticide trends in 28 industrialized countries between 1960 and 2009. The analysis is based on the cause of death data from the WHO Mortality Database and national materials. The purpose is to compare those trends in all these 28 countries not to compare countries per se. Cause of death statistics are based on ICD classification. During the review period, ICD classification changed three times. In addition to describing infanticide trends, we will analyse the impact of those changes on statistical infanticide levels, to be sure that changes in trends could be seen as real, not statistical artefacts. According to our analysis, the change from ICD-7 to ICD-9 in 1968–1970 seems to have had some impact on registered infanticide mortality levels in three of the studied countries. In other countries, the changes did not have any general impact on registered infanticide levels. During the period, infanticide rates decreased in almost all European countries, and increased or were stable in most non-European industrialized countries. Even in Europe, there were significant differences in the decreasing trend between countries. We also found some structural variation behind the trend figures, which raised the question of whether the aggregated infanticide levels really describe an identical phenomenon in different countries.