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  • The first refers to the moral unity of a community, the second to the level and distribution of material welfare and living conditions, the third to the risk of becoming a victim of a crime, and the fourth to the reaction of the state against lawbreakers. These four ways of viewing crime will be discussed in hopes of reaching some t e n t ative conclusions about their applicability in social reporting. It is, however, not altogether clear how these early s t a t i s t i cians understood the relationship between the crime rates and the like and the morals of the entire population. A certain rate of recorded crime in a population can be obtained through different relations be-tween the morals of those committing crimes and the morals of the rest of the community. Some examples are given in figure 2. The horizontal axis marks the range from "good" to "bad" citizens, where the very bad ones-the criminals -can be found on the extreme left (compare . Both distribution I and distribution II can be said to be properties of a nation and both could yield the same average crime rate. However, only number I has a direct bearing on the morals of the entire population and it therefore has a greater value as a general social indicator. The "bad" ones are just a little worse than the "almost bad" ones, and the criminals form the end of a c o n t i nuum. In distribution II, the criminals should be seen as a group more or less cut off from the general population in a moral sense. The differences might be easier to see if we insert two a d d i tional distributions which might be regarded as the original d i s t r i butions at a later stage. In both cases, crime has increased but in different ways. In distribution III, the rise was caused by a general deterioration of the morals in the population. More people will now consider and commit a criminal act. In distribution IV, the rise in crime has been obtained by an increase in the number of persons who will commit crimes, while at the same time the morals of the great 4 majority have remained unchanged. The crime-prone population may a l s o have been stable in size but just moved on the horizontal a x i s committing more and more severe crimes. The criminal group is e v e n more apart from the general population in terms of morally b l a m e w o r t h y a c t s . On the whole, the approach of moral statistics has been seen as incompatible with modern criminological analysis and it has been a b a n doned by most criminologists . The moral issue seems to disappear when changes in crime rates are explained in terms of soc i a l and demographic changes. However, the approcah is still alive and I would like to point out the particularly fruitful research by t h e Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie. Two examples will suffice to show how he uses criminological data to describe other and more g e n e ral conditions in society. Scandinavian countries, Christie tries to interpret the general d e crease in prison populations in all the countries during the l a ter part of the 19th century and the much higher level in Finland a f ter World War I. He sees the development during the 19th century as a s i g n of d e f l a t i o n of the value of one day in prison. With the improvement of living conditions in general, the relative deprivation of being i n carcerated increases. The prison sentence can therefore be shortened without any loss of the relative pain to be inflicted. Consequently, the development of the prison population during this period indicates that the suffering in the outside society had declined. The high level of imprisonment in Finland during the 20th century then reflects an inflation in the "penal value" of one day in prison -an inflation which was caused first by the civil war and then by Finland's p a r t i c i pation in World War II. The prison sentence had to be accommodated to the changes in the level of suffering and general living conditions in the outside society ). In another study, Christie voices concern about the declining number of libel cases which are brought to court. A society in which the number of libel cases d e cline is a society in which honour is no longer valued, in which an insult need not be settled, and in which people can withdraw from further interaction. This pattern applies to societies in which people care less about one another, and this is the 5 case in modern, anonymous societies. As can be seen from showing the number of convictions for libel in Norway during the h a l f century following World War I, the trend at least supports C h r i s t i e ' s assumption . . Index. I compares persons found guilty of theft in the S c a n d i navian countries (Iceland excluded) during World War I I . 1 Theft has been chosen for the analysis since it is the quantitatively dominating crime. Moreover, theft is a relatively one-dimensional type of crime, the motive for which -individual (and illicit) economic gain -is presumably also valid during times of war. Theft rose in all four countries up to 1943-44 and the d e velopment therefore hardly lends any support to the idea that war i n creases integration. An ad-hoc explanation that "it could have been worse" cannot be excluded, of course, but is difficult to test. Nor does it seem possible to save the hypothesis about improved morals during times of war by referring to the differences in war experience. The missing data for Denmark 1944-45 are due to the dissolution of the police by the occupying forces. The sharp rise in Finland in 1945 occurs when the war is more or less over for the country and can at least in part be attributed to the return of the mobilized forces to civilian society. The maximum equalization coefficient.3 The Maximum Equalization Coefficient is a measure for the percentage of the total income needed to transfer from people with incomes above the median to those below it to achieve equalized incomes for everyone. The questions from these surveys are given in English and in German in the appendix. ducted by Statistics Sweden as well as by comparisons of the S c a n d i navian countries ) . If we regard it to be important to have indicators of v i c t i m i z a tion in society, why then bother at all with special victim surv e y s ? The official crime statistics exist, in many cases for a long p e r i o d of time, and they cost the researcher nothing to collect. The a n s w e r to this is that the data from victim surveys offer some advantages. The fourth reservation concerns the discrepancy between the v i c tim surveys and the "real" level of crimes of violence. Even though more violence is reported in the interview studies than to the police, most intra-group violence, including violence in the family, will not be reported in standardized interviews . This is so b e cause interviewees will feel shame or fear or experience the violence as a private matter unrelated to the penal law categories. That the dark figure for this source as well here is probably quite large means that changes in victimization risks over time could easily be the re suit of changes in reporting, for instance, as a result of an o n g o i n g public debate about violence in the family. The fifth and final reservation concerns the question of t h r e a t s of violence, which were also included in the Swedish surveys. T h e problem of reliability is of particular importance here. In f o l l o w -u p interviews after two weeks, a large proportion of interviewees h a v e forgotten the serious threats they reported half a month earlier, a n d others report threats which they had not thought of on the first o c c a sion. This issue was omitted from the final analysis in the study o f the Swedish Institute for Social Research ). An additional problem concerning the victim studies is the q u e s tion of fear of crime, which is included in the surveys done by S t a t i Crow n s vorth lost through theft and/or damage Changes in Penal V a l u e s Scandinavian Studies in Criminology Hvor tett et samfunn? Oslo: Unviersitetsf0r l a g e t Le suicide Crime and the Condition of the Working Class Carson & P. Wiles: Crime and Delinquency in Brita i n . London: Martin Robertson & Company Brott och_" straf f i . . S v e r i g e . Stockholm: Statistiska centralbyrän Nordic Criminal__ Statistics Stockholm: Statistics Sweden. Unit of Justice and Social S t a t i s tics Stöld i Sverige 1831-1980 Samhällsproblem. Malmö: Liber General Deterrence in a Longitudinal Perspective. A Swedish Case: Theft, 1841-1985 European Socio l o gical R e v iew Veli Verkko och den finska k r i m i nologin.' Nord isk Tidsskrift for Kriminalvidenskab Crime and Control in Scandinavia during the Second World War. Scan d i n a vian Studies in Criminology Stöldförsäkring -mot brott -eller för?' In Kriminalitet och f r i h e t Alcohol and Criminal V i Time Series Analyses in a Comparative Perspective. Edsbruk: Akademitryck. t . Stockholm: Statistiska centralbyrän Dual Welfare-Seqmentation and W o r k Enforcement in the Swedish Welfare S y s t e m Offer för tillgrepp, ska d e g o relse och väld -en redovisning av 1974 Ars o f ferunde r s ö k n i n g Statistiska centralbyrän Rä t t s statistisk ärsbok 1988 Svenska vrSkningar 1970-1985 Skall rStt vara rStt?' ApropA nr 2 Sakerhet till liv och egendom V a l f Srd i for indring Crimes, Drugs and Suicide in the Scandinavian C o u n tries since 1950 Welfare Trends in t h e Scandinavian C o u n t r i e s . (Forthcoming) Crime and the Development of M odern Society Economic R e s o u r c e s . 1 In Welfare in T r a n sition. A Survey of L i v ing Conditions in Sveden 1968-1981 Schuessler Methoden der Analyse zeitbezogener Daten. Vortragsskripten der ZUMA-Arbeitstagung vom 25 ALLBUS Manfred Küchler Verallgemeinerte Lineare Modelle in der empirischen Sozialforschung Glenn R. Carroll Dynamic analysis of discrete dependent variables: A didactic essay Manfred Küchler Zur Messung der Stabilität von Wählerpotentialen Manfred Küchler Zur Konstanz der Recallfrage Rolf Porst " ALLBUS 1982" -Systematische Variablenübersicht und erste Ansätze zu einer Kritik des Fragenprogramms Peter Ph. Mohler SAR -Simple AND Retrieval mit dem Siemens-EDT-Textmanipulationsprogramm Cornelia Krauth Vergleichsstudien zum ALLBUS Bernd Wegener Two approaches to the analysis of judgments of prestige: Interindivi dual differences and the general scale Rolf Porst Synopse der ALLBUS-Variablen. Die Systematik des ALLBUS-Fragenprogramms und ihre inhaltliche Ausgestaltung Datenmanagement bei qualitativen Erhebungsverfahren") -Sammlung von Arbeitspapieren und -berichten, Teil I + II Bernd Wegener Gibt es Sozialprestige? Margrit Rexroth Erfahrungen mit einer Technik zur Bewertung von Interviewerverhalten Frank Faulbaum Ergebnisse der Methodenstudie zur internationalen Vergleichbarkeit von Einstellungsskalen in der Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften Dagmar Krebs Zur Konstruktion von Einstellungsskalen im interkulturellen Vergleich Hartmut Esser Können Befragte lügen? Zum Konzept des "wahren Wertes" im Rahmen der handlungstheoretischen Erklärung von Situationseinflüssen bei der Befragung Bernd Wegener Prestige and Status as Function of Unit Size Frank Faulbaum Very Soft Modeling: The Logical Specification and Analysis of Complex Process Explanations with Arbitrary Degrees of Underidentification and Variables of Arbitrary Aggregation and Measurement Levels Peter Prüfer, Margrit Rexroth (Übersetzung: Dorothy Duncan) On the Use of the Interaction Coding Technique Hans-Peter Kirschner Zur Kessler-Greenberg-Zerlegung der Varianz der Meßdifferenz zwischen zwei Meßzeitpunkten einer Panel-Befragung Georg Erdmann Ansätze zur Abbildung sozialer Systeme mittels nicht-linearer dynamischer Modelle Heiner Ritter Einige Ergebnisse von Vergleichstests zwischen den PC-und Mainframe-Versionen von SPSS und SAS Günter Ein Instrument zur Bestimmung des sozialen Status von Zielhaushalten Gabriele Hippler, Hans-Jürgen Hippler Reducing Refusal Rates in the Case of Threatening Questions: The "Door-in-the-Face" Technique Hartmut Esser Befragtenverhalten als "rationales Handeln" -Zur Erklärung von A n t wortverzerrungen in Interviews Rolf Porst Klaus Zeifang Die Test-Retest-Studie zum ALLBUS 1984 -Abschlußbericht Barbara Erbslöh, Michael Wiedenbeck Methodenbericht zum "ALLBUS 1986" Norbert Schwarz, Julia Bienias What Mediates the Impact of Response Alternatives on Behavioral Reports Die ZUMA-Arbei tsber i c h t e (neue F o l g e ) h a b e n eine hausinterne Begutachtung durchlaufen und w erden vom Geschäfts führenden Direktor zusam m e n m i t d e n ü b r i g e n W i s s e n s c h a f t l i c h e n L e i tern herausgegeben. Die Berichte dieser Reihe s i n d z u r a l l g e m e i n e n W e i t e r g a b e n a c h außen bestimmt Die ZUMA-Arbei tsber i c h t e (neue F o l g e ) h a b e n eine hausinterne Begutachtung durchlaufen und w erden vom Geschäfts führenden Direktor zusam m e n m i t d e n ü b r i g e n W i s s e n s c h a f t l i c h e n L e i tern herausgegeben. Die Berichte dieser Reihe s i n d z u r a l l g e m e i n e n W e i t e r g a b e n a c h außen bestimmt GROBID - A machine learning software for extracting information from scholarly documents Introduction The first refers to the moral unity of a community, the second to the level and distribution of material welfare and living conditions, the third to the risk of becoming a victim of a crime, and the fourth to the reaction of the state against lawbreakers. These four ways of viewing crime will be discussed in hopes of reaching some t e n t ative conclusions about their applicability in social reporting. It is, however, not altogether clear how these early s t a t i s t i cians understood the relationship between the crime rates and the like and the morals of the entire population. A certain rate of recorded crime in a population can be obtained through different relations be-tween the morals of those committing crimes and the morals of the rest of the community. Some examples are given in figure 2. The horizontal axis marks the range from "good" to "bad" citizens, where the very bad ones-the criminals -can be found on the extreme left (compare Wilkins 1964) . Both distribution I and distribution II can be said to be properties of a nation and both could yield the same average crime rate. However, only number I has a direct bearing on the morals of the entire population and it therefore has a greater value as a general social indicator. The "bad" ones are just a little worse than the "almost bad" ones, and the criminals form the end of a c o n t i nuum. In distribution II, the criminals should be seen as a group more or less cut off from the general population in a moral sense. Crime as an indicator of integration The differences might be easier to see if we insert two a d d i tional distributions which might be regarded as the original d i s t r i butions at a later stage. In both cases, crime has increased but in different ways. In distribution III, the rise was caused by a general deterioration of the morals in the population. More people will now consider and commit a criminal act. In distribution IV, the rise in crime has been obtained by an increase in the number of persons who will commit crimes, while at the same time the morals of the great 4 majority have remained unchanged. The crime-prone population may a l s o have been stable in size but just moved on the horizontal a x i s committing more and more severe crimes. The criminal group is e v e n more apart from the general population in terms of morally b l a m e w o r t h y a c t s . On the whole, the approach of moral statistics has been seen as incompatible with modern criminological analysis and it has been a b a n doned by most criminologists (Jaakkola 1984) . The moral issue seems to disappear when changes in crime rates are explained in terms of soc i a l and demographic changes. However, the approcah is still alive and I would like to point out the particularly fruitful research by t h e Norwegian criminologist Nils Christie. Two examples will suffice to show how he uses criminological data to describe other and more g e n e ral conditions in society. In a historical comparison of rates of imprisonment in t h e Scandinavian countries, Christie tries to interpret the general d e crease in prison populations in all the countries during the l a ter part of the 19th century and the much higher level in Finland a f ter World War I. He sees the development during the 19th century as a s i g n of d e f l a t i o n of the value of one day in prison. With the improvement of living conditions in general, the relative deprivation of being i n carcerated increases. The prison sentence can therefore be shortened without any loss of the relative pain to be inflicted. Consequently, the development of the prison population during this period indicates that the suffering in the outside society had declined. The high level of imprisonment in Finland during the 20th century then reflects an inflation in the "penal value" of one day in prison -an inflation which was caused first by the civil war and then by Finland's p a r t i c i pation in World War II. The prison sentence had to be accommodated to the changes in the level of suffering and general living conditions in the outside society (Christie 1968 ). In another study, Christie voices concern about the declining number of libel cases which are brought to court. A society in which the number of libel cases d e cline is a society in which honour is no longer valued, in which an insult need not be settled, and in which people can withdraw from further interaction. This pattern applies to societies in which people care less about one another, and this is the 5 case in modern, anonymous societies. As can be seen from figure 3 showing the number of convictions for libel in Norway during the h a l f century following World War I, the trend at least supports C h r i s t i e ' s assumption (Christie 1975) . Finland, Norway, and Sweden, 1937-1947 . Index. I Figure 4 compares persons found guilty of theft in the S c a n d i navian countries (Iceland excluded) during World War I I . 1 Theft has been chosen for the analysis since it is the quantitatively dominating crime. Moreover, theft is a relatively one-dimensional type of crime, the motive for which -individual (and illicit) economic gain -is presumably also valid during times of war. Theft rose in all four countries up to 1943-44 and the d e velopment therefore hardly lends any support to the idea that war i n creases integration. An ad-hoc explanation that "it could have been worse" cannot be excluded, of course, but is difficult to test. Nor does it seem possible to save the hypothesis about improved morals during times of war by referring to the differences in war experience. The missing data for Denmark 1944-45 are due to the dissolution of the police by the occupying forces. The sharp rise in Finland in 1945 occurs when the war is more or less over for the country and can at least in part be attributed to the return of the mobilized forces to civilian society. The maximum equalization coefficient.3 The Maximum Equalization Coefficient is a measure for the percentage of the total income needed to transfer from people with incomes above the median to those below it to achieve equalized incomes for everyone. The questions from these surveys are given in English and in German in the appendix. 10** 1 i i i t i -i -i -i -i -• * -< ---- ducted by Statistics Sweden as well as by comparisons of the S c a n d i navian countries (Tham 1989 ) . If we regard it to be important to have indicators of v i c t i m i z a tion in society, why then bother at all with special victim surv e y s ? The official crime statistics exist, in many cases for a long p e r i o d of time, and they cost the researcher nothing to collect. The a n s w e r to this is that the data from victim surveys offer some advantages. The fourth reservation concerns the discrepancy between the v i c tim surveys and the "real" level of crimes of violence. Even though more violence is reported in the interview studies than to the police, most intra-group violence, including violence in the family, will not be reported in standardized interviews (Persson 1976) . This is so b e cause interviewees will feel shame or fear or experience the violence as a private matter unrelated to the penal law categories. That the dark figure for this source as well here is probably quite large means that changes in victimization risks over time could easily be the re suit of changes in reporting, for instance, as a result of an o n g o i n g public debate about violence in the family. The fifth and final reservation concerns the question of t h r e a t s of violence, which were also included in the Swedish surveys. T h e problem of reliability is of particular importance here. In f o l l o w -u p interviews after two weeks, a large proportion of interviewees h a v e forgotten the serious threats they reported half a month earlier, a n d others report threats which they had not thought of on the first o c c a sion. This issue was omitted from the final analysis in the study o f the Swedish Institute for Social Research (Tham 1984 ). An additional problem concerning the victim studies is the q u e s tion of fear of crime, which is included in the surveys done by S t a t i A P P R O X I M A T E L Y H O W M U C H DID Y O U R LOSS AMOUNT TO ALTOGETHER? Crow n s vorth lost through theft and/or damage Figure 1 . 1 The curve in figure 1 represents convictions for theft in Sweden s i n c e 1831 (von Hof er & Th a m 1983). What is the social meaning of such a curve? What is its sociological significance? To say that crimequantified in one way or another -is a social indicator is not m u c h of an answer since the question immediately becomes: What then does it indicate? Convictions for theft in Sweden 1831-1987. Per 100 000 population 15-64 years. Log. scale. I will try to distinguish four different meanings of the idea of crime as a social indicator, namely, crime as an indicator of The idea of crime as an indicator of the integration or the m oral state of a nation is not uncommon in political rhetorics and pub l i c debate. The crime trends in Western countries will be used to c h a r a c terize the general moral development in our types of societies. C o n servatives will see the rise in crime as a sign of a welfare system that undermines personal responsibility and promotes laziness and a p a thy; socialists as an expression of the egoistic and exploitative n a ture of capitalism; and Greens as an indicator of the development of a large-scale, anonymous society. The theoretical basis for this perception of crime rates was established in the first half of the 19th century. During that period, men like Adolphe Quetelet and Andr6-Michael Guerry laid the foundation of the tradition of moral statistics. The prime interest of this school of thought was not the rate of crime, suicide, drunkeness, d i vorces, or children born out of w e dlock per se. It was instead these phenomena as infractions against common rules as indicators of the m o ral state of the nations (Jaakkola 1984). The foremost exponent of regarding deviance in this way is of course Emile Durkheim. His c o n tribution to the field of social indicators is that he utilized rates of rare behavior, such as suicide, as an indicator of a more general condition in society, such as the degree of anomie or normlessness (Durkheim 1967) . Figure 2 . 2 Distribution of morals in populations. Figure 3 . 3 Convictions for libel in Norway 1921-1971. Per 100 000 population. A final example of research on crime as a moral indicator will be a study of my own. The starting point of the research was the notion of crime as an indicator of changes in solidarity in times of war. Two contradictory ideas can be found in the literature: the first one postulates that war strengthens morals and reduces crime; and the other one claims that war leads to demoralization with an accompanying increase in crime. A comparison of the Scandinavian countries during World War II can perhaps shed some light on the controversy. The c o u n tries are similar in social structure but dissimilar in their e x perience of the war -Finland as belligerent, Sweden as neutral (or at least n o n -p a r t i c i p a n t ) , and Norway and Denmark as occupied (though to different degrees) . The different war situations could be interpreted in terms of differences in the legitimacy of the political system with consequent effects on law-abidingness. Finland with its constitution in operation, its enormous sufferings, and its threatened existence should be expected to show the lowest crime level during the war. In Sweden the legitimacy of the government remained intact, but the pr e s sure from an outside enemy was much less. In Norway the legitimacy of the government ceased after the German occupation, and in Denmark i t broke down finally in 1943 when the government resigned. But it i s hard to say whether these circumstances should be expected to lead t o split loyalties and increases in crime in Norway and Denmark or t o strengthened solidarity with fellow countrymen and decreases in the theft rate. Figure 4 . 4 Convictions for crimes of theft in Denmark, The theft curves hardly correspond to what could have been p r e d i c t e don the basis of differences in the legitimacy of the existing s y s t e m s . 2 A better explanation would be in economic rather than m o r a l terms, and consider factors like inflation, decreasing real wages, a n d shortages of goods for private consumption(Jaakkola & Than 1989).Although it is tempting, caution is advised when using c r i m e data as moral indicators. The interpretation of crime data on the aggregate level should be checked on the individual level as far as possible in order to avoid going astray. For instance, one o b j e c t i o n to Christie's interpretation of the development of the sentences for libel is that libel cases at least in former times primarily reflected the maltreatment of household servants. A libel suit would be one of few ways possible to take revenge on a master or mistress for u n f a i the literature should also be approached c r i tically since they are not seldom characterized by a clear ideological bias. This is found in the writings on crime and war where the a s s e r tion that crime decreases during times of war often also expresses the author's general outlook on war. Finally, the relation between the d e viants and the majority must be analysed in depth -both theoretically and empirically -before any conclusions can be drawn about crime and national integration. I would at least for the moment, not know what to say about the development of integration in Sweden on the basis of the theft curve. Crime as an indicator of marginalization The second way in which crime could be seen as a social indicator is as an indicator of marginalization in the sense of material welfare and living conditions. On the individual level, this is rather uncontroversial. Punishment is obviously non-welfare, and prison sentences for crime definitely mean low level-of-living for incarcerated p e r 2 sons. Numerous studies have also shown that persons sentenced for r e peated traditional crimes live under poor living conditions.Of greater interest in the context of social indicators, h o w ever, is whether crime varies with general living conditions in such a way that crime is a sign of poverty in society. This idea stems f r o m the tradition of liberal and radical writers of the last century.Friedrich Engels was early to see rising crime in the first part of the 19th century as an indicator of the proletarization of the w o r k ing-class (Engels 1971). And writers a hundred years ago p r e dicted that crime would decrease or even vanish with increased standards of living and improved general education. Returning to our theft curve, it is quite clear that limited periods with dramatically deteriorating living conditions have al s o been marked by sharp increases in property crimes. This is shown by the crop failure of 1867-68, by the last years of World War I and, to some extent, by World War II. The general decrease in theft during the second half of the 19th century also coincides with the gradual improvement in general living conditions. The same development can be observed in several Western nations for both crime and living standards (Zehr 1976). However, the development of theft in Sweden during the last sixty years contradicts the expectations of the earlier radical writers. The development of theft probably does reflect improved l i v ing conditions but in an opposite way. One interpretation of the curve is that theft now follows the opportunities to steal. These o p p o r t u n i ties are then a function of the development of goods for private consumption and the simultaneous decrease in the control of each single object. For instance, it has been shown that the number of car thefts follows the number of registered cars (von Hofer & Tham 1989; Lenke 1989a) .A way of salvaging the hypothesis that crime is a sign of p o verty and the marginalization of certain segments of the population would be to turn to the notion of relative rather than absolute standards of living. This notion was of course also part of radical 19th century thinking. Our object of study would then be inequality and its relation to the level and development of crime. From this p e r spective the theft curve should be seen as an indicator of inequality 9 in modern Sweden. However, the picture of the overall development i n Sweden during the last decades does not lend support to this h y p o t h e sis.Figure 5shows that the number of persons found guilty of n o n trivial offences has more than doubled between1950 (RSttsstatistisk ¿rsbok 1988. During the same years, the equalization of income has been quite marked when measured through the maximum e q u a lization coefficient as in figure 6(Aberg, Sel6n & Tham 1987) .The hypothesis that rising crime indicates rising inequality might, however, still be saved in some way. The living conditions of s m a l l minority groups might deteriorate at the same time there is an o v e r a l l tendency toward less inequality in society. The groups might be t o o small, even if they comprise tens or hundreds of thousand, to affect the total picture. Therefore, it may be the case that while the g e n e ral standards of living and equality have increased in Sweden d u r i n g the past decades, there are small but increasing groups that are l a g g ing behind. Figure 5 . 5 Persons sentenced to sanctions registered in the General Criminal Register inSweden, 1950Sweden, -1987 Per 100 000 population 15-years. Figure 6 . 6 Development of income equalization inSweden 1950Sweden -1980 1951 S3 55. 5 ! 59 61 63 66 67 69 71 73 1980Some indicators actually support the view that such a d e v e l o p ment has taken place in Sweden. The number of social welfare r e c i pients has not decreased since the 1950s and has even increased during the 1980s by as much as fifty percent. Since the end of the 1960s, there has been a sharp increase in the number of housing evictions(Stenberg 1986) . The number of alcohol and narcotics abusers has risen dramatically since the end of World War II (even though the situation seems relatively stable since the m i d -s e v e n t i e s ) . Furthermore, among those sentenced for crime, the increase in the proportion of r e c i d i vists seems to be particularly pronounced(von Hofer & Tham 1983 ). parental duties, or unemployment as well. However, if an in d i v i d u a l for some reason is not in the labour force, he or she clearly f a l l s behind in term of economic resources-And even if the group o u t s i d e the labour force decreases, the marginalization of those left o u t s i d e becomes more marked(Marklund & Svallfors 1987) . Typical of the g r o u p s discussed here is a large proportion who is not well integrated in t h e labour market. Therefore, the rising crime trend, and in p a r t i c u l a r the rise in recidivism, may reflect a general tendency towards g r e a t e r difficulties for those in the active ages who are not part of the w o r kf o r c e . I will now sum up the discussion on crime as an indicator of m a terial welfare. There is a relationship between crime and the gene r a l level of living, but the direction of the relationship will depend on the developmental status of the society. Given the conditional na t u r e of this relationship, it might be possible to use crime data in o r d e r to predict data on crop failures, market imbalances, levels of private consumption, and so on, where such data are missing. The idea that crime varies directly with overall inequality does not seem to hold true today. However, a rise in crime and other m e a sures of deviance might indicate that small segments of the population are falling behind in the Western societies. If we look at figure 2 again, this time regarding the curves as distributions of level-ofliving in the population, the development from II to IV could i l l u strate the background of rising crime. And if such marginalization is a result of properties of the welfare system and of modern, rational work life, then crime data become an important indicator of a central tendency in our type of society. C r i m e a s a n i n d i c a t o r o f v i c t i m i z a t i o n The third way of interpreting the crime curve would be the most o b vious one, that is, regarding it as an indicator of victimization. As such, it can be seen as a specific aspect of welfare or level-of-living, namely, as an indicator of "security of life and property". In this specific sense, the official crime statistics in Sweden would i n d icate reduced welfare over time. Theft crimes have multiplied since World War II and crimes of violence have been increasing since the mi d -s i x t i e s . An immediate objection to such an interpretation may be that the official crime statistics are only indicators of the changing and d i s cretionary practices of the criminal justice system -an objec t i o n which then could also be directed against the two previously prese n t e d in t e r p r e t a t i o n s . However, this objection can be challenged. Most crimes aga i n s t individuals, which are those of primary interest in a level-of-living context, are reported to the police by the citizens themselves. T h e y are therefore much less subject to police discretion than, say, n a r c o tics crimes. Another way of validating the official statistics, at least w h e n it comes to theft, is through statistics complied by the insurance companies. Since the proportion of insured households is quite high in Sweden, most burglaries and car thefts are also reported to the i n s u r ance companies. If minor theft is excluded, the official theft s t a t i stics and the insurance statistics coincide quite well. (This c o r r e spondence, however, can be problematic in itself. Through their p o l i cies the insurance companies probably to some degree help shape the official crime statistics, see Lenke 1989a -a matter, however, which I cannot go in more detail into h e r e ) . One way of validating the official crime statistics is through victim surveys. Such surveys have been carried out by Statistics Sweden on a yearly basis since the mid-seventies, as part of their general level-of-living studies. Periodically, the questions on crime in these surveys are expanded in order to allow for a more thorough analysis. Questions on victimization have also been included in the level-of-living studies carried out by the Swedish Institute for S o cial Research. These surveys, which include a panel, were conducted in 1968, 1974, and 1981 -however, the first survey did not include q u e s tions on v i c t i mization.^ Here again, the official t h e f t statistics are supported by the results from the level-of-living surveys con-4 One has already been mentioned -that of validating the official c r i m e statistics. The surveys have confirmed these statistics to a great d e gree. Another advantage is that they allow an analysis of v i c t i m i z a tion rates in different strata of society. The risk facing single mothers, immigrants, and young working-class boys in large cities can be compared to the average risk. For instance, the surveys from S t a t i stics Sweden have revealed quite high risks among single mothers of becoming a victim of violence (Levnadsffirh&llanden 1978). Still another use for victim data, if they have been collected within a level-of-living survey, is the analysis of their co-variation with other welfare problems concerning, for instance, health, e m p l o y ment, housing, and political resources. The results from the Swedish studies indicate that the distribution of the risk of becoming a property-crime victim actually contributes to a reduction of the overall inequality in society. The risk is highest in the upper classeswhich of course is primarily explained by its members having more p r o perty(Tham 1984) .In spite of these advantages, there is, however, reason to warn against an exaggerated faith in victim surveys. I will briefly discuss five reservations -the three last ones all dealing with crimes of violence. The first reservation concerns the fact that victimization is a relatively rare event. Crimes of violence with bodily harm or visible marks are reported by one percent of the adult statistically significant results drops ra pidly. This is also true for the possibility of measuring changes over time. When it comes to crimes of property, the victimization rate of course is higher. If, however, these questions are not limited to somewhat more serious crimes, one runs the risk of comparing burgla ries with the loss of a pair of children's gloves at school. There is, therefore, a clear limit to the analyses that can be conducted.The second reservation has to do with the non-response r a t e among certain groups. Marginal groups in society are known to have r e latively high victimization rates. Not seldom do they appear both a s victims and as perpetrators. The non-response rate in surveys has a l s o been shown to be higher for such groups. In the level-of-living s u rveys of the Swedish Institute for Social Research, both social w e l f a r e recipients and recidivists in crime showed above average n o n -r e s p o n s e rates. This introduces a bias in the analysis of the living conditions of marginal groups. The third reservation involves the discrepancy between the o f f i cial statistics and the victim surveys regarding crimes of violence. While reported crimes, as mentioned, are increasing, the v i c t i m studies show a stable level in Sweden. The two series might, however, still be compatible. The number of offences reported in the vi c t i m studies is several times higher then the number reported to the p o lice. Crimes of violence occurring out-of-doors between strangers, cases which are usually reported to the police, might very well have risen. At the same time, other types of crimes of violence, reported primarily in victim surveys might have declined so that a picture of an overall stable development emerges from these surveys. In order togive a more complete explanation of this discrepancy, it would be n e cessary to co-ordinate official crime statistics and the victim s u r veys in a better way. They would each have to accomodate the c a t e gories of the other, so as to facilitate comparison. stics Sweden. Objective and subjective experiences do not always c o i n cide. Those who are most likely to express fear of crime in the i n t e r views are also those who are least likely to be victimized, that is, elderly women. This is not to imply that the fear expressed by the elderly should be disregarded. It does, however, become problematic in a policy perspective. What should the Ministry of Justice o f f i c i a l s base their decisions on?The data on fear of crime also underline the importance of n o t interpreting crime rates mechanically. The harm and fear caused b y crime depends among other things on the economic compensation from i n surance policies, on the relation between the victim and the p e r p e t r a tor, on the degree of isolation of the victim, and on the state of general anxiety in society. The crime curve in the diagram is not a u ni-dimensional indicator of the development of evil.Crime as an indicator of stigmatizationThe fourth manner to regard crime is from the standpoint of s t i g m a tization or social reaction. The official rates of crime and co n v i c tions are interpreted as the output of the law enforcement and t r e a t ment system. The analysis should then try to explain the amount and forms of control of marginalized persons which characterize different societies. Much of the writings on the subject of control in the m o dern Western societies have centered on the question of welfare-state 16 specific forms of control. The description and evaluation of the c o n trol, however, differs markedly. The ideological overtones are more manifest in this type of a p proach to the study of crime, since the question of the legitimacy of the state become crucial. The perspective therefore requires a m u c h more thorough discussion -a discussion which, however, cannot b e undertaken here. Reco m m e n d a t ions The main problem with using crime as a social indicator is that c r i m e is a rare event. If trivial offences are excluded, the number of p e r sons in a year who have experienced crime as a perpetrator or as a victim constitutes but a small fraction of the population. It could be argued that crime is not relevant as a general social indicator, w h i c h otherwise should refer to the experiences of a larger number of p e o p l e . One way of justifying crime as a social indicator is, however, that crime rates in fact also have something to say about those w h o have not been found guilty of crime; something about the processes underway in the entire population. Such attempts have been discussed here under the headings "intergration" and "marginalization". In this way the crime rates become more generally relevant, but at the same time, the interpretations became more uncertain or even of a s p e c u l a tive nature. This tension between indicators of great relevance and of high validity is probably to some degree unavoidable. In official social reporting, it would also be difficult to include indicators based on more speculative interpretations. Still, I think it would be valuable to include some measure of crime in official social reporting. I will end this presentation with some recommendations for specific in d i cators that could be used, and why. All of the indicators can be collected from the official criminal statistics at no cost. The five indicators to be introduced briefly are homicide, assault, burglary, robbery, and imprisonment. Homicide The validity of the homicide rate can be relatively well established by using cause-of-death statistics as a control. The justification for bringing homicide into social reporting is primarily that it can be compared to other types of unnatural death which generally are of great concern to the public. The often exaggerated ideas about the risk of death as a result of homicide could be presented along with figures on death as a result of traffic accidents, other accidents, alcohol related deaths, and suicides. A s s a u l t Assault as it appears in the police statistics is probably a poor in dicator of the general level and development of criminal violence in society. The type of assault which is most threatening to the publicoutdoor violence between strangers -does carry some validity in the police statistics, though (see Lenke 1989b). In order to use the o f f i cial figures here for regular social reporting, the categories of the police statistics must be adapted to this type of violence, and victim surveys should also be brought in as occasional checks.Burglary Burglaries in homes are probably reported to the police to a very high degree, both because of their perceived seriousness and because of i n surance requirements. By limiting the risk of becoming the victim of theft to home burglaries, the indicator becomes more robust. And even though this makes the measured event relatively rare, it is e x p e r i enced by many victims -though by no means all of them as a s e r i o u s threat in a quality-of-life perspective. Robbery Robbery is usually committed by persons with low criminal skills, h i g h recidivism rates, and severe alcohol and/or narcotics abuse problems. The development of robbery might therefore be an important i n d i c a t o r of tendencies of marginalization of some segments of the population. Both robbery and recidivism have shown very sharp increases s i n c e World War II in Sweden -development which might indicate a more g e n e ral change in society (von Hofer 1985). Imprisonment Data on the number of prison sentences and the average prison p o p u l a tion are of value whether they reflect the crime level or not. To be in prison means to be deprived of many things which are valued in life. It is therefore an indicator of (non)welfare for a fraction of the population. And even if this fraction is very small, it is n o t negligible in sub-populations such as among blacks in the Unit e d States. Prison data can serve as a social indicator in yet another way. Imprisonment is in most Western countries the utmost means of control that the state uses against its citizens. The detrimental effects of imprisonment are well documented. It represents a breakdown in r e l a tions in civil society and a use of force which should be avoided as far as possible. A limitation in the use of prison is therefore an end in i t s e l f . The criminal policy of a nation is, to quote the former director of the Swedish council for crime prevention, Bo Svensson (1988), a part of its cultural policy. So why not include the size of the prison p o pulation in a comparative perspective among the cultural indicators in the social reports? APPENDIX: The leve 1-of-living survey 1981 Swedish Institute for Social Research -------------IX. b t c L k i T Y ----------------------------------------E R E THE THEFT(S) REPORTED TO THE POLICE? N u mber of thefts reported to the police N o t e ................................................ No is coded as zero reports HAS IT HAPPENED DURING THE PAST TWELVE MONTHS THAT ANYONE HAS D A M A G E D OR DESTROYED ANY PROPERTY OF YOURS? (WILFUL DAMAGE, has been the v i cti m of theft according to Q 135 and/or damage to property according to Q 136 ask Q 137. O therwise go to Question 138 a_____________________________________ D I D THE THEFT/DAMAGE LEAD T O ECONOM IC LOSS NOT C O V E R E D BY INSURANCE O e ................... Contrary to the beliefs of many people, the Swedish welfare state has strong in-built work incentives. The benefits of the welfare state are to a high degree tied to working-life. Members of the labour force are entitled not only to a salary but to a fairly good compensa tion if unable to work because of old age, sickness, work accident, These groups, which have all increased in size during the p o s t war period, are known to have below average living standards. Is there a common development in these groups which makes it reasonable to s e e k a common, underlying cause, perhaps a general aspect of the orga n i z a tion of Swedish society? I will rather tentatively put forward a p o s sible answer to this question borrowing an analysis from Staffan Marklund and Stefan Svallfors. , bus, subway or train-, bus-or subway station at a restaurant, dancing hall, people's park or the like on the street, market, square or other public placeOther place, w h i c h ? .......................................-..............IX. SICHERHEIT FUER LESEN UND EIGENTUMFALLS IP GEMÄSS FRAGE 135 DIEBSTAHL UND/ODER GEMÄSS FRAGE 136 BESCHÄDIGUNGEN HATTE, WIRD FRAGE 137 GESTELLT. ANDERNFALLS WIRD MIT FRAGE 138a FORTGESETZT.FUEHRTE DER DIEBSTAHL / DIE BESCHÄDIGUNG EINEN FINANZIELLEN VERLUST FUER SIE MIT SICH, WELCHER NICHT DURCH VERSICHERUNGEN ODER AUF ANDERE WEISEGEDECKT WURDE? Buss, der Untergrundbahn, oder an einer ihrer Stationen? In Restaurant / Wirtshaus, an einer Tanzstelle, in einem Volkspark oder an einem anderen Vergnügungsplatz Auf der Strasse, einem Platz / Harkt oder an einer ändern öffentlichen Stelle A n einem ändern Platz, welchem? WÜRDE DIES / EIN SOLCHES EREIGNIS D E R POLIZEI GEMELDET? Nein Eeoerkung: ............................................. « .. 22 Question 138 a IN THE LAST TWELVE M O N T H S , HAVE YOU BEEN EXPOSED TO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING? 57 58 135; Frage 138a Frage 45 Ja Nein Yes Ko 1 2 HATTEN SIE WAHREND DER LETZTEN ZUÖLF MONATE EINEN DIE3STAHL? HAREN SIE WÄHREND DER LETZTEN ZWÖLF HONATEN EINER ODER EINIGEN DER Violence causing visible marks or injury? Violence not causing visible marks or injury? Ja FOLGENDEN HANDLUNGEN AUSGESETZT? 1 2 1 2 Threat or threats that were dangerous or serious e n ough to frighten Nein -^■Frage 136a 57 1 2 Gewalt, welche zu sichtbaren Zeichen oder Körperschaden führte? 59 you? If no on all iteics SB Gewalt» welche nicht zu sichtbaren Zeichen oder Verletzung führte 12 Bemerkung: 55 1 2 Bedrohung oder Drohungen» die gefährlich waren, oder so ernsthaft, -^Question 139 a dass Sie Angst bekamen? Frage 135b WIEVIELE MALE? Note . Anzahl Haie FALLS HEIN HEI SÄMTLICHEN Frage 139a WURDE DER DIEBSTAHL / WÜRDEN DIE DIEBSTÄHLE DER POLIZEI GEMELDET? Bemerkung: 1 If yes on any question on violence or threat (according to 138 a) 1 Anzahl Diebstähle, welche der Polizei gemeldet vurden ¡NEIN WIRD MIT ¡0 KODIERT Question 138 b Falls Ja zu einer Frage über Gewalt oder Bedrohung (in Frage 138a): DID ANY OF THIS OCCUR Yes No 1 I Frage 136b *5 Frage 136c so L_! WIEVIELE MALE? in a dwelling? at your workplace? Anzahl Male WURDE DIE BESCHÄDIGUNG DER POLIZEI GEMELDET? Anzahl Beschädigungen, welche der Polizei gemeldet wurden NEIN WIRD MIT 0 KODIERT B emerkung: FTage 137a 51 Ja Nein . Frage 138a Frage 137b S U L L Beoerkung: WIEVIEL CELD VERLOREN SIE DABEI UNGEFÄHR (INSGESAMT)? Kronen Verlust durch Diebstahl und/oder Beschädigung 54 55 1 2 1 2 Frage 138c -55-on a train( 2 0 Frage 136a 48 KAM ES WÄHREND DER LETZTEN ZWÖLF MONATE EINMAL VOR, DASS JEMAND IHR Tr a g e 138b PASSIERTE DIES/ETWAS DAVON ... EIGENTUM BESCHÄDIGT ODER ZERSTÖRT HAT? (Schadenanrichtung, nicht Unglücks-fall) Ja-Nein -F r a g e 1 3 7 a Bemerkung: 60 In Ihrer Wohnung oder einer ändern Wohnung 1 2 61 A n Ihrem Arbeitsplatz 1 2 62 63 1 2 1 2 Id Zug, Frage 135c Changes in Penal V a l u e s N Christie Scandinavian Studies in Criminology 2 Norwegian University Press N Christie Hvor tett et samfunn? Oslo: Unviersitetsf0r l a g e t E Dürkheim Le suicide Paris: Press Crime and the Condition of the Working Class F Engels Carson & P. Wiles: Crime and Delinquency in Brita i n . London: Martin Robertson & Company H Von Hofer Brott och_" straf f i . . S v e r i g e . Stockholm: Statistiska centralbyrän H Von Hofer Nordic Criminal__ Statistics PM 1988:12 Stockholm: Statistics Sweden. Unit of Justice and Social S t a t i s tics Stöld i Sverige 1831-1980 H & H Von Hofer Tham Samhällsproblem. Malmö: Liber T. Goldberg General Deterrence in a Longitudinal Perspective. A Swedish Case: Theft, 1841-1985 H & H Von Hofer Tham European Socio l o gical R e v iew 5 1 Veli Verkko och den finska k r i m i nologin.' Nord isk Tidsskrift for Kriminalvidenskab R Jaakkola 3 Crime and Control in Scandinavia during the Second World War. Scan d i n a vian R & H Jaakkola Tham Studies in Criminology H. Takala & H. Tham 1 0 Norwegian University Press Crime and Sanctions during the W a r '. forthcoming L Lenke Stöldförsäkring -mot brott -eller för?' In Kriminalitet och f r i h e t Stockholm Verdandi Alcohol and Criminal V i L Lenke Time Series Analyses in a Comparative Perspective. Edsbruk: Akademitryck. t . Stockholm: Statistiska centralbyrän Dual Welfare-Seqmentation and W o r k Enforcement in the Swedish Welfare S y s t e m S Marklund & S Svallfors University of Ume&: D e partment of Sociology Offer för tillgrepp, ska d e g o relse och väld -en redovisning av 1974 Ars o f ferunde r s ö k n i n g L Persson Statistiska centralbyrän Stockholm Rä t t s statistisk ärsbok 1988 Statistiska centralbyrän. 20 Stockholm S Sperlings Krumbukt nr 1 Svenska vrSkningar 1970-1985 S-A Stenberg Socialt A r b e t e 1986:5 B Svensson Skall rStt vara rStt?' ApropA nr 2 Sakerhet till liv och egendom H Tham V a l f Srd i for indring R. Erikson & R. Aberg Stockholm Prisma Crimes, Drugs and Suicide in the Scandinavian C o u n tries since 1950 H Tham Welfare Trends in t h e Scandinavian C o u n t r i e s . (Forthcoming) E.J. Hansen et.al. L Wilkins London: Tavistock H Zehr Crime and the Development of M odern Society London Croom Helm Economic R e s o u r c e s . 1 In R Aberg J Sel6n & H Tham Welfare in T r a n sition. A Survey of L i v ing Conditions in Sveden 1968-1981 R. Erikson & R . Aberg Oxford Oxford University Pr e s s Schuessler Methoden der Analyse zeitbezogener Daten. Vortragsskripten der ZUMA-Arbeitstagung vom 25 Gerhard Arminger Willibald Nagl F Karl 09. -05.10.79 Erika Brückner Hans-Peter Kirschner Rolf Porst Peter Prüfer ALLBUS Peter Schmidt Methodenbericht zum Manfred Küchler Verallgemeinerte Lineare Modelle in der empirischen Sozialforschung Glenn R. Carroll Dynamic analysis of discrete dependent variables: A didactic essay Manfred Küchler Zur Messung der Stabilität von Wählerpotentialen Manfred Küchler Zur Konstanz der Recallfrage Rolf Porst "ALLBUS 1982" -Systematische Variablenübersicht und erste Ansätze zu einer Kritik des Fragenprogramms Peter Ph. Mohler SAR -Simple AND Retrieval mit dem Siemens-EDT-Textmanipulationsprogramm Cornelia Krauth Vergleichsstudien zum Manfred Küchler Thomas P Wilson Don H Zimmerman Integration Von Qualitativen Und Quantitativen Forschungsansätzen Gerhard Arminger Horst Busse ALLBUS Bernd Wegener Two approaches to the analysis of judgments of prestige: Interindivi dual differences and the general scale Rolf Porst Synopse der ALLBUS-Variablen. Die Systematik des ALLBUS-Fragenprogramms und ihre inhaltliche Ausgestaltung Werner Hagstotz Hans-Peter Kirschner Rolf Porst im ALLBUS 1980 und ALLBUS 1982 Peter Prüfer Methodenbericht zum "ALLBUS Datenmanagement bei qualitativen Erhebungsverfahren") -Sammlung von Arbeitspapieren und -berichten, Teil I + II Bernd Wegener Gibt es Sozialprestige? Manfred Küchler Peter Ph Konstruktion und Validität der Magnitude-Prestige-Skala Mohler Qualshop (ZUMA-Arbeitstagung zum Margrit Rexroth Erfahrungen mit einer Technik zur Bewertung von Interviewerverhalten Frank Faulbaum Ergebnisse der Methodenstudie zur internationalen Vergleichbarkeit von Einstellungsskalen in der Peter Prüfer Allgemeinen Bevölkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften 1982 ALLBUS Dagmar Krebs Zur Konstruktion von Einstellungsskalen im interkulturellen Vergleich Hartmut Esser Können Befragte lügen? Zum Konzept des "wahren Wertes" im Rahmen der handlungstheoretischen Erklärung von Situationseinflüssen bei der Befragung Bernd Wegener Prestige and Status as Function of Unit Size Frank Faulbaum Very Soft Modeling: The Logical Specification and Analysis of Complex Process Explanations with Arbitrary Degrees of Underidentification and Variables of Arbitrary Aggregation and Measurement Levels Peter Prüfer, Margrit Rexroth (Übersetzung: Dorothy Duncan) On the Use of the Interaction Coding Technique Hans-Peter Kirschner Zur Kessler-Greenberg-Zerlegung der Varianz der Meßdifferenz zwischen zwei Meßzeitpunkten einer Panel-Befragung Georg Erdmann Ansätze zur Abbildung sozialer Systeme mittels nicht-linearer dynamischer Modelle Heiner Ritter Einige Ergebnisse von Vergleichstests zwischen den PC-und Mainframe-Versionen von SPSS und SAS Günter Jürgen Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik Wohnquartiersbeschreibung Ein Instrument zur Bestimmung des sozialen Status von Zielhaushalten Gabriele Hippler, Hans-Jürgen Hippler Reducing Refusal Rates in the Case of Threatening Questions: The "Door-in-the-Face" Technique Hartmut Esser Befragtenverhalten als "rationales Handeln" -Zur Erklärung von A n t wortverzerrungen in Interviews Rolf Porst Peter Prüfer, Michael Wiedenbeck Klaus Zeifang Methodenbericht zum "ALLBUS 1984. Rothe Bootstrap in generalisierten linearen Modellen Klaus Zeifang Die Test-Retest-Studie zum ALLBUS 1984 -Tabellenband Klaus Zeifang Die Test-Retest-Studie zum ALLBUS 1984 -Abschlußbericht Barbara Erbslöh, Michael Wiedenbeck Methodenbericht zum "ALLBUS 1986" Norbert Schwarz, Julia Bienias What Mediates the Impact of Response Alternatives on Behavioral Reports (xsd:string)
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