Population ageing and accelerated digitalization pose significant challenges for the digital inclusion of older adults, particularly from a criminological perspective. This study examines how fear of cybercrime and insecurity in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) affect their participation in the digital society and expose them to the risk of online victimization. Through semi-structured interviews, it was identified that dysfunctional fear of cybercrime, prevalent among non-users of ICT, limits their access to digital benefits and exacerbates social isolation. On the other hand, frequent users, although less fearful, often use these tools without adequate training, increasing their objective risk of victimization due to a lack of protective measures. The lack of ICT training emerges as a critical barrier that reinforces digital exclusion and heightens perceived insecurity. This educational deficit, coupled with limited social support, reduces older adults’ ability to navigate digital environments safely. Although prior experiences of online victimization have a weak association with fear, the perception of insecurity plays a key role in exclusion and vulnerability. The importance of designing accessible digital literacy programmes tailored to the needs of older adults is highlighted. These programmes should focus on mitigating dysfunctional fears, strengthening digital competencies and promoting preventive strategies against cybercrime. Additionally, intuitive technological interfaces could help reduce digital inequalities and vulnerabilities, improving quality of life and resilience to online risks.
This article draws on neutralisation theory to explore the accounts of landlords involved in law-breaking in England and Wales. The private rented sector (PRS) in England and Wales and elsewhere has long been considered a space which can foster vulnerability and exploitation by bad actors. These actors include criminal landlords who may engage in illegal evictions, letting unsuitable accommodation, and complicity in cannabis cultivation or sexual exploitation by those renting their properties. While previous research has documented the challenges of policing the PRS, there is a dearth of scholarship engaging directly with criminal landlords. This article addresses this research gap, drawing on 16 interviews with landlords who have broken the law to develop understandings of how these actors rationalise and justify their illegal behaviours. In doing so, this article extends existing scholarship on neutralisation theory to a hitherto unexplored group – criminal landlords – and seeks to develop understandings more broadly of vulnerability and criminality in the PRS.
Based on the data from the 2016–2023 waves of the Barcelona Tourist Survey, this article introduces three variables that fill two specific gaps in the literature. The first gap is the inadequate way in which cultural competence has been measured as a predictor for tourist victimization. Two variables are presented in the article that help resolve this problem. Place of residency is an ordinal variable that can distinguish among Catalan, Spanish and foreign tourists, when usual variables measuring tourist origin are dichotomous. Number of past visits to Barcelona gauges the prior knowledge of Barcelona that tourists have, so that their capability of knowing their way around and staying out of dangerous places—thus reducing their exposure to victimization—can be taken into consideration, something rarely done in the literature. The second gap is the little importance afforded time as a key predictor of tourist victimization by the specialized literature. This article uses days in destination in order to gauge the exposure to victimization generated by spending days in the tourist destination, carrying valuables around and patronizing hardly defensible places full of anonymous people. The Chi-squared tests and univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses presented here show that these variables might be valuable predictors of criminal victimization among tourists and thus deserve further testing and theoretical development in future work.
In criminology, the call for transparency and openness in research practices is resounding louder than ever. FAIR ( f indable, a ccessible, i nteroperable and r eusable) and open data are recognized as a necessity to enable replication of criminological research, enhance future empirical studies, foster collaboration and inform evidence-based policymaking. Yet, criminologists are faced with an intricate web of privacy regulations governing the dissemination of sensitive data about crime victims, perpetrators, witnesses or other stakeholders. In this article, we examine criminology-specific challenges posed by regulations like General Data Protection Regulation, which mandate safeguarding of personally identifiable information, often rendering original data unsuitable for open sharing. To reconcile this dilemma, we discuss the use of synthetic data generation as a tool to overcome (parts of) this challenge. Synthetic data entails creating artificial datasets that mimic the statistical characteristics of real data while obfuscating identifying information. By utilizing synthetic data, criminologists can both adhere to stringent regulations while disseminating data and facilitating open science practices. This article discusses benefits, as well as ethical considerations and limitations of synthetic data. As a proof-of-concept, we showcase the synthesis and publicly release a synthetic version of the Dutch Homicide Monitor, using an existing open-source tool for data synthetization.
In this paper, we propose that the idea of ‘triple violence’ can be a fruitful conceptual tool for scholars, policymakers and practitioners concerned with interpersonal physical violence between young people. Building on and adapting previous theoretical analyses of the multi-layered, relational nature of violence, we set out a conceptualisation intended to articulate the dynamic relationship between structural, psychological and interpersonal forms of harm. Grounded in interviews and focus groups with youth practitioners and young people from Glasgow (Scotland) and London (England), we outline the similarities and differences in experiences of violence across the two cities, as well as exploring their interconnectedness. In a UK policy context which tends towards a narrow conception of interpersonal violence, we suggest the need for attentiveness to the tightly interconnected phenomena of structural and psychological harm, to which the concept of ‘triple violence’ offers a helpful shorthand.
Institutional child victimization is a phenomenon that has received uneven attention from both academia and society. The obstacles encountered by numerous victims in voicing their experiences and seeking recognition suggest the concealment of multiple narratives. Spain is one such case of so-called “historical (or non-recent) institutional child victimization.” During the period known as the “Second Francoism” (1960 to 1975) in Spain, motherhood was perceived as an essential attribute of femininity, leading to a focused control over women and children, a feat that would not have been possible without the systematic collaboration of influential entities, including the Catholic Church and state apparatuses, particularly institutions functioning similarly to prisons and managed by religious orders where the ostensible aims of charity were overshadowed by this repressive agenda. In this study, we explore the experiences of children residents in institutions during the first decade of Second Francoism (1960–1970), thus uncovering the victimization endured by the participants. We have found that the effects of this victimization persist to this day, underscoring the need to characterize its distinctive features within the framework of institutional child victimization. We propose the term “total child victimization” to encapsulate these unique aspects. Such characterization is a crucial first step toward further action, as only by accurately identifying victims’ experiences within their specific contextual framework can we develop reparation schemes that genuinely address their needs.
Anecdotal evidence and experimental studies have suggested that social exclusion might play a major role in the process of becoming a terrorist. However, there is a lack of systematic empirical data to support this claim. Therefore, in this work, we investigated whether exclusion is an incidence which occurs more frequently in the lives of terrorists. To provide an in-depth examination of this question, we performed three studies. We conducted interviews with terrorism experts and analyzed these data qualitatively (study 1) and coded qualitative data on terrorists from newspaper articles (study 2) and judicial decisions (study 3), which were analyzed quantitatively. Supporting our hypothesis, social exclusion revealed to accumulate in terrorist biographies. Moreover, we identified differences between right-wing and religiously motivated terrorists regarding the kinds of exclusion which occurred most prominently in their biographies: for right-wing terrorism, it was particularly personal exclusion due to the lack of a peer group and explicit rejection experiences; for religiously motivated terrorism, it was particularly grievance-based exclusion due to their sociocultural background and non-extremist criminality. All in all, these findings support previous theories and studies and corroborate the assumption that social exclusion is a frequent experience on the pathway toward terrorism.
The literature discusses the effectiveness of compliance systems in preventing white-collar crime. Compliance programmes in organisations focus on processes to facilitate crime desistance and have often been studied as organisational-level mechanisms for crime prevention targeting crime-opportunity structures. The extensive academic literature on white-collar crime prevention is increasingly recognising the role of individual traits as key predictors of rule-violating decisions. Yet, the perceptual and evaluative dispositions of executives - as they manifest within the context of compliance programmes - have received limited attention. We draw on convenience theory, which examines crime propensity as shaped by an individual's perceptions and evaluations, to explore the perceptual pathway through which decision-makers, as receivers of compliance-related normative pressures evaluate crime convenience. In doing so, we aim to assess the effectiveness of compliance programmes by examining their relationship with the status of conviction for white-collar crime through the perceived compliance pressures-perceived crime convenience pathway. We conducted a survey on a unique and hard-to-access sample of 102 Spanish executives and directors, 23 of whom were serving prison sentences for white-collar crimes. We used partial least squares techniques to explore the relationship between perceived compliance pressures, perceived crime convenience, and the status of conviction for white-collar crime. Results show that managers' perception of crime convenience fully mediates the significant and positive effect that perceived pressures to adopt compliance programmes have on conviction status. The paper contributes to the literature on compliance effectiveness by incorporating the role of individual behavioural dimensions such as evaluative perceptions, and their impact on the status of conviction. It also aims to enrich convenience theory by proposing new insights into the compliance-convenience relationship, and by supporting the applicability of convenience theory to incarcerated white-collar crime offenders.
Research tries to discover which factors of the imprisonment experience and the conditions of release are relevant to reduce the risk of recidivism. We conducted research with persons serving a prison sentence (in ordinary prison, open prison or on parole) (n = 538) to test whether factors pointed out by general strain, social support and differential association/social learning theories are related to recidivism. Unlike previous research, we found that the level of coercion, support and learning experienced during imprisonment is unrelated to the risk of recidivism. We found that subjects who benefited from supervised release, in comparison to those who were released without supervision at the expiration of the sentence, were associated with a significantly lower risk of recidivism. This study should be seen as a confirmation of the emerging research that underlines that the release stage is critically related to challenging recidivism, and this can be achieved when individuals benefit from supportive supervision aimed at challenging criminogenic needs and promoting social integration.
While the use of media by police forces has been widely studied, films produced by public police organisations have only been scarcely researched. Such films, however, allow us to observe how police forces seek to reproduce their symbolic power. Through a qualitative content analysis, this article examines image films produced by Swiss police forces, a genre of film that aims to represent the operation of an organisation, focusing on how they represent policing. The research shows that Swiss police forces present themselves as crime-fighters, as organisations with unlimited tasks and as helping and listening to the public. Officers are portrayed as well-educated, professional and courteous, as human and as part of the local community. This conveys an image of police forces and officers as legitimate and trustworthy. At the same time, police forces are portrayed as consisting of and interacting primarily with white Swiss German speakers. In this way, these films delineate the boundaries of membership through a selective inclusion of these demographic groups.
This study extends existing research on adolescent cyber-victimization by highlighting the role of the parent-child relationship as an important protective factor. Drawing on data from a large, self-reported survey of ninth-grade students (N = 1.546) living in the four largest cities in Czechia and employing structural equation modeling (SEM), the study assesses the direct and indirect effects of the parent-child relationship and parental control on cyber-victimization, considering the mediating roles of risky internet behavior, time spent on social networks, and self-control. Four types of cyber-victimization-mocking and teasing, pornography, fearful content, and sexual harassment-were analyzed. Parental control showed a weak positive effect on cyber-victimization, whereas a better parent-child relationship was consistently associated with less frequent cyber-victimization across all analyzed types. In addition, indirect effects were mediated either through self-control alone or through combinations of lower self-control, higher level of risky internet behavior, and more time spent on social networks. While excessive parental control may be counterproductive, a balanced and supportive parent-child relationship appears to reduce cyber-victimization both directly and indirectly by fostering stronger self-control.
This article uses the theoretical lens of situational action theory to develop two hypotheses about the relative rates of crime that occur when pupils with certain crime propensities spend time in schools that they perceive to have certain moral contexts. These hypotheses are tested with data from the School and Community Environment Survey and a dual-methods analytical approach. Single-level negative binomial modelling is used to explore the statistical interaction between propensity and moral context in relation to criminal offending. Simple contextual analysis is then used to explore the impact of the convergence of propensity and perceived moral context on criminal offending in schools. Findings from both methods of analysis demonstrate that pupils with high crime propensity who perceive a weak moral context engage in criminal behaviour at the highest rates in schools. Findings from the simple contextual analysis also suggest that the criminal behaviour of those with high propensity is most sensitive to the influence of perceptions of school moral context. This article makes an important contribution to the criminological knowledge base surrounding the role of individuals’ perceptions of their environment and offending. It also contributes to the debate around the suitability of different methods for testing the assertions of SAT.
In the UK, the recent 'turn to vulnerability' in safeguarding and the criminal justice system has meant an increasing recognition that many children and vulnerable adults committing crimes, such as drug dealing, are in fact victims of criminal exploitation involving manipulation and coercion. This recognition is fairly recent, and the visibility of exploited children and adults is impacting how they are dealt with and safeguarded. In other parts of Europe, there is also burgeoning recognition of drug market-related criminal exploitation (DMCE) manifesting in various forms. In most European states, DMCE is, however, as of yet, not as 'visible' or as accommodated by the criminal justice and safeguarding systems that process exploited children and adults, and still often see these as criminals first and exploited second. Drawing on an international research network, we provide the first assessment of DMCE as an internationally relevant concept and how DMCE victims are situated across various spaces. Data derives from a comparative research project conducted in Denmark, the Republic of Ireland, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the UK supported by expert reflection on research evidence and analysis of criminal justice processing, policy documents and media reporting in each context. Findings show that DMCE is present in all contexts, that its degree of socio-legal visibility varies and that 'offender' versus 'victim' narratives continue to dominate the extent to which DMCE victims are accommodated as such.
This research aims to develop a novel domestic abuse risk assessment tool, called Lizzy, for predicting the repeat victimisation of German female victims of physical intimate partner violence. Our approach includes actuarial and machine learning techniques based on data from a longitudinal online survey with a nationally representative sample of 3878 respondents (July to November 2023). Four algorithms were employed: CatBoost, XGBoost, Logistic Regression, and Random Forest. Logistic regression performed best with an accuracy of 0.82 and Area Under the Curve of 0.85. We find that predictors covering multiple dimensions of abuse, including physical abuse as well as economic, digital, and emotional abuse, contribute to model performance.
Rising youth gang involvement in the Nordic countries has become a growing concern, particularly due to its association with crime and other problem behaviours. This study is the first to examine the prevalence and risk factors of street gang involvement among adolescents from nine cities in five Nordic countries. Using comparative, cross-national probability city samples from the fourth wave of the International Self-Reported Delinquency Study (ISRD4), the analysis includes data from 9039 adolescents aged 13-17 from Denmark (n = 1094), Finland (n = 2037), Iceland (n = 3007), Norway (n = 1559), and Sweden (n = 1342). Based on the Eurogang measurement, the findings highlight significant differences in gang involvement across cities, with Stockholm exhibiting the highest prevalence of youth gang involvement (16%). These differences persisted after adjusting for individual-level risk factors. Adolescents involved in gangs reported higher levels of peer delinquency, pro-delinquency attitudes, lifetime assault, as well as lower levels of parental control and self-control. In contrast, family strain and perceived discrimination were associated with street gang involvement only at the city level. The study discusses the implications of these findings for policy and prevention strategies, emphasising the need for targeted interventions to curb the rise of gang involvement among youth in the Nordic region.
In this paper, we present four distinct narrative poses - the 'DIY'er', the 'Professional', the 'Na & iuml;ve', and the 'Denier who knows' - adopted by incarcerated men involved in organized crime-related murders in the Netherlands. Drawing on life story interviews conducted in five Dutch prisons between 2020 and 2022, this study offers a unique emic perspective on how these individuals construct meaning around their involvement in lethal violence. It reveals how they position themselves within the specific moral and cultural framework of organized crime. While the narrative poses of the 'DIY'er' and the 'Professional' closely align with established criminological understandings of violent crime dynamics, the 'Na & iuml;ve' and the 'Denier who knows' offer more nuanced and layered forms of meaning-making, challenging dominant interpretations. As the first study to explore organized crime-murders using first-hand Dutch prison data, this research demonstrates the plural, often contradictory self-representations, advancing academic understanding on the diverse narrative stances adopted by incarcerated men involved in organized crime-related murder.
While procedural justice research has established that uncaring, insensitive or intimidating police treatment is linked to negative mental health outcomes for crime victims, the psychological consequences of exclusion remain underexplored. Using data from an online survey of crime victims who interacted with the police (n = 504), this study tested four hypotheses: the direct harmful effect of procedural injustice on mental health (H1), the negative impact of police-induced exclusion on mental health (H2), the link between procedural injustice and police-induced exclusion (H3) and whether procedurally unjust police behaviour worsens feelings of exclusion, further undermining mental health (H4). Findings challenge the initial hypothesis that police procedural injustice harms crime victims' mental health by inducing exclusion. Instead, they suggest a dual impact: procedural injustice both harms mental health and fosters exclusion, but these effects appear to operate independently rather than being directly linked. These results remained consistent even after accounting for crime type and severity, and demographic and socio-economic factors. Qualitative survey responses and four follow-up interviews provide valuable lived experiences and context that enrich the survey findings. They suggest that procedural injustice may harm mental health by stripping victims of the core conditions necessary for psychological recovery - safety, validation, justice and agency - while also undermining their trust in the police. The study underscores the need for emotionally intelligent and procedurally fair policing to support victims' psychological well-being.
The open science movement strives to improve the transparency, accessibility, rigor, and reproducibility of scientific research. Arguing that open science increases the impact of research, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) has been promoting an open science program in the Netherlands since 2009, aiming to make all funded publications open access and research data open and FAIR; that is, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. Our research institute, the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), is one of the 10 national research institutes that receive long-term structural funding from the NWO. It has therefore also taken up the challenge of moving from a 'closed' to an 'open' model of science. If implemented in full, this cultural shift would require NSCR staff to relate to open science values in a nationwide system where recognizing and rewarding open science practices remains a challenge. In this article, we use data from an online questionnaire among our colleagues to (1) describe NSCR scientific staff attitudes toward nine open science practices-publishing open access, publishing preprints, sharing open code, sharing open data, sharing open materials, conducting open peer review, using open source software, preregistering research, and disclosing contribution roles-and (2) identify barriers to adopting these practices. We used a mixed methods approach combining descriptive quantitative analysis of five-point Likert scale items with qualitative inductive thematic analysis of open-ended questions. This approach reveals a nuanced perspective on open science practices, overcoming the false dichotomy of all for or all against. Although attitudes toward the open science practices are generally positive, the thematic analysis also identifies 36 barriers that should be addressed to support their further adoption.
Reviews of youth justice intervention effectiveness prioritise hierarchies of evidence that obscure how contextual features shape the 'mechanisms' of change in preventative interventions. This article critiques this current evidence-based approach to youth justice interventions and its reliance on reoffending reduction as a measure of effectiveness. Community-based prevention programmes have been central to youth justice, since the late 20th century in England and Wales. However, by concentrating primarily on effect sizes, this approach often overlooks the influence specific contexts have on the mechanisms that can facilitate behaviour or attitude change through these preventative interventions. The authors propose that a realist approach could enhance understanding by focusing on how interventions work, for whom, and why. The article begins by outlining key theories that underpin youth justice programmes, followed by an overview of the realist synthesis (RS) approach to evidence review. This approach emphasises the mechanisms behind interventions and the contextual factors influencing their success. The authors apply this perspective to two types of community-based interventions used with two distinct and different groups of children: Intensive Supervision and Surveillance and Restorative Justice Conferencing in Referral Orders. The study makes three contributions. First, it provides an original detailed account of conducting an RS in the youth justice context, demonstrating the value of realist methods in evaluating youth justice interventions. Second, it highlights that youth justice interventions are often underpinned by competing programme theories that, in practice, work both in harmony and tension - producing a more diverse set of outcomes beyond simple proclamations of interventions being effective or not. Third, it emphasises that understanding and refining these underlying theories can improve children's outcomes in youth justice programmes through practical guidance.
In this study, we employ a newly developed time series econometric approach to investigate the development in crime rates in various members states of the European Union (EU) between 1968 and 2019. We propose a panel data model with stochastically time-varying factors that also includes country-specific effects. This model enables us to evaluate the existence of a common EU crime trend, including a crime drop, to describe how individual countries depart from this common trend, and to estimate its association with macroeconomic and demographic explanatory variables. To have an equivocal measure of crime over the countries for the period of interest, we use homicide rates based on the Mortality Database from the World Health Organization. Results confirm the presence of a crime drop in the EU, be it stronger in Western EU countries than in Eastern EU countries. We also find that economic conditions explain a small portion of the crime trends in the EU; with macroeconomic activity (economic growth) being more relevant for Eastern EU countries, and macroeconomic performance (welfare growth) for Western EU countries. The young adult ratio (share of 25- to 34-year-olds in the total population) substantially explains the crime trend and drop in Western EU countries only. Our findings illustrate how the new model can be used to analyze the trends in crime, the fit from explanatory variables, and the differences in countries.
