Global evidence indicates minimal connection between immigration and crime. Nordic research, however, has been generally carried out on individuals and shows that immigrants are over-represented in crime. This has led to claims that high crime rates are due to immigration. We directed our study towards these claims by analyzing immigrant population prevalence, defined as the percent of foreign-born individuals, and violent crime in Swedish municipalities between 2000 and 2020. Nearly all municipalities had higher violent crime rates in 2020 relative to 2000. To discern whether drastic increases in municipality-level crime rates could be connected to municipality-level immigrant population prevalence, a retrospective case–control design was used to select 20 municipalities with the highest increase in reported violent crime rates and 20 municipalities with the lowest increase in reported violent crime rates. Immigrant population prevalence had little association with high rates of reported violent crime. The average association between immigrant population prevalence and violent crime rates calculated from all municipalities was also weak and non-significant (p > 0.05). Municipalities with a high increase in crime tended to have more crime correlates than municipalities with a low increase in crime. However, more research is needed on the impact of migration in small towns, especially those that have experienced economic and social stagnation.

Safety and security are essential concepts for everyone involved in mental health care. Safety means the absence of potential harm, while security refers to the protection against deliberate, external threats. The focus on the management of safety and security changes from Safety-I (avoiding that something goes wrong) to Safety-II (ensuring that everything goes right). Due to societal dilemmas, clinical practice needs to address safety and security for everyone involved in mental services, instead of primarily safety and security of professionals. The primary focus of safety management should be on relational safety and security, instead of procedural and environmental safety and security. Several organisational innovations, such as High Intensive Care, Six Core Strategies, and Safewards, assist in ensuring safety and security for all involved. People working or staying in mental health wards need to be safe and secure but also need to feel safe and secure.

In Sweden and around the world, studies have consistently shown that immigrants commit more crimes than nonimmigrants. Findings of immigrant overrepresentation in crime have led to beliefs that growth in the immigrant population will beget more crime. However, research from around the world has generally indicated that immigration has little to no effect on aggregate rates of crime. In Sweden, crime rates have remained relatively stable over the past 40 years despite a rapidly growing immigrant population. It is unclear why crime rates have not concomitantly increased with the growth in the immigrant population. In this study, we aim to understand how immigration is associated with crime. In the WHiS-Project. We ask seven specific research questions in six sub-studies:

1. How has crime and immigration developed in Sweden and comparable countries between 1975-2019? 2. How has crime and immigration developed in different municipalities? 3. How has the composition of the crime suspects and those prosecuted for different types of crime changed with respect to ethnicity, social class, gender, health, and childhood conditions? 4. What do criminal and social careers look like across generations among individuals? 5. How do individuals interpret their development with regard to crime and other life events? 6. What do "co-offending" networks look like in terms of ethnicity and other social factors for different types of crime? 7. How have the characteristics of persons suspected for or prosecuted for certain types of crime changed?

In the following presentations, we will present preliminary findings from four of our six sub-studies.

På bara drygt ett år har Sverige haft fyra skolattacker. Den 21 mars miste två lärare i Malmö livet när en 18-årig elev gick till angrepp. Kriminologen Sofia Wikman menar att glappen i samhällets skyddsnät leder till fler våldsdåd.

This study is a part of the Forte financed project “What happened in Sweden over the last 40 years? Studies on crime, gender, ethnicity, and social class”. The aim of this qualitative study is two-fold. Firstly, it attempts to explore narratives about immigration, socioeconomics, and crime among individuals with long-term professional experience.

Secondly, it will analyse narratives about immigration, socioeconomics, and crime among previously convicted individuals. The ambition is to triangulate the results from the other quantitative studies in the Forte project and describe the people behind the statistics and their stories. The study has a narrative approach and s based on semi-structured interviews with professionals and formerly convicted individuals. 

National governments took action to delay the transmission of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) by implementing different containment measures. We developed an online survey that included 44 different containment measures. We aimed to assess how effective citizens perceive these measures, which measures are perceived as violation of citizens’ personal freedoms, which opinions and demographic factors have an effect on compliance with the measures, and what governments can do to most effectively improve citizens’ compliance. The survey was disseminated in 11 countries: UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, India, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Sweden. We acquired 9543 unique responses. Our findings show significant differences across countries in perceived effectiveness, restrictiveness, and compliance. Governments that suffer low levels of trust should put more effort into persuading citizens, especially men, in the effectiveness of the proposed measures. They should provide financial compensation to citizens who have lost their job or income due to the containment measures to improve measure compliance. Policymakers should implement the least restrictive and most effective public health measures first during pandemic emergencies instead of implementing a combination of many restrictive measures, which has the opposite effect on citizens’ adherence and undermines human rights.

We aimed to evaluate the prevalence and incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety and panic disorder (PD) among citizens in 11 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explored risks and protective factors most associated with the development of these mental health disorders and their course at 68 days follow up. We acquired 9543 unique responses via an online survey that was disseminated in UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, India, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Sweden. The prevalence and new incidence during the pandemic for at least one disorder was 48.6% and 17.6%, with the new incidence of PTSD, anxiety, depression, and panic disorder being 11.4%, 8.4%, 9.3% and 3%, respectively. Higher resilience was associated with lower mental health burden for all disorders. Ten to thirteen associated factors explained 79% of the variance in PTSD, 80% in anxiety, 78% in depression, and 89% in PD. To reduce the mental health burden, governments should refrain from implementing many highly restrictive and lasting containment measures. Public health campaigns should focus their effort on alleviating stress and fear, promoting resilience, building public trust in government and medical care, and persuading the population of the measures’ effectiveness. Psychosocial services and resources should be allocated to facilitate individual and community-level recovery from the pandemic.

Bakgrund: I flera av de skandinaviska ländernas offerundersökningar har exempelvis andelen somsvarat att de utsatts för arbetsplatsrelaterat våld ökat sedan 1990-talets början. Våld iarbetslivet har blivit en viktig fråga för arbetstagarnas intresseorganisationer och problemet tas oftare upp i media. Även forskningen på området har expanderat och ny lagstiftning har tillkommit. Problemet beskrivs ofta som tilltagande i olika europeiska undersökningar och kartläggningar. Mot bakgrund av att våld i arbetslivet framstår som ett samhällsproblem medallt större prioritet är det angeläget att fortsätta att studera dess utveckling som socialt problem.Syfte: Det övergripande syfte är att studera omfattning och utveckling av våld i arbetslivet, hur detuppmärksammats samt vilka åtgärder som föreslagits. Vad kan våld på jobbet kan vara, vilketvåld ökar och vad bör vi göra åt det?Metod: Jag går igenom vilka kunskapskällor som finns på området och gör en longitudinell analys av SCB’s ULF-undersökningar om hur utsattheten för våld utvecklats i olika yrkesgrupper de senaste 40 åren.Resultat: Sedan 1980-talets början har andelen i ULF-undersökningarna som uppger att de utsatts förvåld eller hot i arbetslivet ökat påtagligt, särskilt inom de kvinnodominerade välfärdsyrkena.Tendensen att våld i arbetslivet har gått från att ses som ett problem som ska lösas internt påarbetsplatsen som en arbetsmiljöfråga till att allt oftare ses som ett problem som ska lösasexternt av polis och rättsväsende är särskilt tydlig inom vissa branscher.  

Våld och hot i arbetslivet är inte enbart ett arbetsmiljöproblem utan även ett demokratiproblem. Hantering av arbetsrelaterat våld och hot regleras i arbetsmiljölagen och Arbetsmiljöverkets föreskrifter. Arbetsgivaren är ansvarig för det förebyggande arbetet som ska utföras i samarbete med skyddsombud och medarbetare. En utgångspunkt i arbetsmiljölagen är att kartlägga de risker som finns i verksamheten. Betoningen av den stabila, formella sidan av arbetsmiljöarbete sker dock ofta på bekostnad av en utveckling i form av arbetstagarmedverkan. Styrning som inte tar kontextuell hänsyn till arbetstagare eller klienter medför negativa konsekvenser. Strategier som inte harmonierar med det faktiska arbetet och regler som hämmar kreativitet och anpassning innebär en begränsning - inte bara för de scenarion vi i förebyggande syfte kan föreställa oss, utan också för att vi berövas en källa till tillit, diversitet och innovation. Den här artikeln beskriver hur två perspektiv hämtade från fältet ”resilience engineering” kan komplettera kriminologin för att användas för att analysera hur arbetsmiljölagen implementeras på olika arbetsplatser i syfte för att förebygga hot och våld.