Summaries fra  89. årgang No. 1 - Marts 2002

This article deals with the necessary prerequisites, potential benefits, and existing limitations surrounding the use of the criminal code in contributing to a healthy environment and a sustainable development.

Environmental legislation has been given significantly greater emphasis within the penal codes of the Nordic countries during the past few decades. This is reflected in both the expansion of the codes to include a greater number of environmental offences, as well as an increase in the maximum penalties available for existing offences. In order to streamline the implementation of these changes, the focus of traditional crime control agencies has been broadened to include them. Sweden, for example, has reinforced its police departments and developed an environmental prosecution unit consisting of 20 public prosecutors specialised in environmental legislation. Such changes answer the demand for a more efficient environmental policy, a more efficient environmental law, and a more efficient environmental penal legislation.

Politicians have suggested that the fight against environmental offences should be a prioritised part of the traditional fight against crime. Political proposals have demanded a specific environmental criminal policy that is both more efficient and better integrated into existing law enforcement.

Does this imply that a specific program for environmental criminal policy – based on a core of the existing environmental criminal legislation – already exists, or rather that such a program is going to be drawn up? Are environmental issues going to be a part of the general criminal and penal political program? This is certainly implied since it seems unreasonable to exclude an area that has been characterised as a prioritised part of crime control policy.

Nonetheless, environmental penal legislation can never be totally disconnected from environmental law. In the end, environmental penal legislation is merely a tool for the efficient implementation of environmental law. The consequences of treating environmental legislation as an issue for both environmental law and criminal law entails certain problems and contradictions are analysed in this article.

A survey from the beginning of October 2001 indicates that Danes became less concerned about crime immediately following the terror attack of September 11^th. Concerns about immigrants, unemployment and other issues also declined. Only concerns over the risk of war increased. A possible interpretation of this result is that the terror attack diverted public attention, which caused normal daily worries to fade. Alternative explanations are, however, possible. The drop in concern about crime may have been due to less media focus on crime in the period just after September 11^th. Alternatively, the drop in concern about crime and other issues may have been an artifact of minor questionnaire changes as the October survey included some new questions concerning people’s feeling of safety in general. The addition of the questions may have caused a context effect, as Danes generally feel rather safe and these safety questions were put first in the questionnaire.

To test for a possible context effect another survey was conducted in which half of the respondents were asked the additional safety questions while half were not. A comparison of the results indicates that the additional safety questions resulted in a significant context effect. Despite this, the drop in concern over crime in early October cannot be totally explained by this context effect. The immense focus on the terror attack seems to have also contributed to the decline in the normal worries.

A Swedish study on strategic offences, i.e. onset crimes that indicate a high probability of future offending, has identified offences and combinations of offences that tend to foreshadow long and intensive criminal careers. For example, the Swedish data suggest that if the two first convictions concern vehicle theft there is a 61 percent chance that the offender will become a chronic offender. These findings have attracted considerable attention in Denmark, and it therefore seems practical to try to validate them within the Danish context. Danish data, however, fail to replicate the results of the Swedish study, which may be at least partly attributable to the relatively small Danish sample. The Danish study emphasises, however, that even if one can identify combinations of offences/convictions indicating a high risk of future criminality, these combinations concern only a minor proportion of the chronic offenders. On the other hand, combinations indicating a low risk of future criminality concern a larger proportion of the chronic offenders. Seen in this perspective, the analysis of strategic offences seems of limited practical importance in predicting criminal careers.

For a period of 19 years there was an on-going dispute concerning whether the police in the town of Bergen practised police violence in the 1970’s and 1980’s. This fierce debate circulated in the media, among scientists, police officers, prosecutors and others. Basically, the parties disagreed on the facts. While it was not unexpected that the research work and the police investigation should come to different conclusions, it was not expected that would arrive at completely contrary conclusions. It is a long story about legal protection or lack of it, about mutual mistrust and aggressive debates. Seven of the research scientists’ informants were sentenced to prison for false testimony. These cases, however, were later re-opened and all were ultimately acquitted. Allegations and counter-allegations were very severe, and became a topic for the European Court of Human Rights. This extended debate was thought-provoking and filled with paradoxes. It was a discussion with no winners, but many losers.

Summaries fra  89. årgang Nr. 2 - juni 2002

Thomas Elholm

 Title in English: Toward Harmonisation of the Criminal Law in the European Union. 

 New information technology and the increasing transnational mobility of persons and goods have lead to changes in patterns of both crime and criminality. As crime becomes more globalised, legal instruments designed to combat crime at the international level have flourished. One of the international policy forums issuing legislation aimed to reduce crime is the European Union. This article examines the background, procedures and goals of the EU policy toward harmonisation of the criminal law. It is suggested that important principles underlying the criminal codes of EU Member States since the Enlightenment are not always respected nor even discussed in regard to EU legislation on harmonisation. Founded on a bizarre concept of justice, the EU seems far more devoted to developing a harmonised and more severe penal system than to the traditional principles of a well functioning, necessary and proportional criminal law

Henrik Linderborg

 Title in English: ”Promoting Self-Discipline through Community Service”.

 This article presents findings from an interview study of 28 persons serving sentences of community service. The interviews were conducted during the spring of 1999. Subjects reported believing that successful completion of their community service – which often lasted several months – required them to assume more responsibility for their own lives. The average length of time served doing community service was 140 hours. The sentence was usually served twice a week, four hours at a time. Depending on a person’s life circumstances, community service was performed either on weekends or during the evenings after working hours. Unemployed persons doing community service served their time during the day. All of those interviewed thought that community service, when performed in this way, required that they be able to plan their everyday lives in the long-term. This was by no means easy for all of them. Most of those interviewed had been, or still were, drinkers or drug users, and therefore remained involved in a kind of lifestyle that diverged in many ways from the conventional lifestyle based on paid work. The long-term planning and regularity demanded by community service required many of those interviewed to force themselves to behave, for example, by not drinking, so as not to spoil their chances of completing their punishment.

Mette Irmgard Snertingdal

Title in English: Shopping Center Security: Privatisation of Control?

 This article examines the extent to which private security has taken over police work. Shopping centers provide a particularly useful setting for the discussion of privatisation of control. This is because the division of labour between police and private guards in shopping centers has become increasingly unclear. Privatisation is generally understood as a shift in the responsibility for producing goods and services from the public sector to the private sector. My argument is that a special concept of privatisation, "offer privatisation", is fruitful for analysing private security in shopping centers. "Offer privatisation " refers to a situation in which the public sector fails to meet the demands of the people, and private actors offer to meet those demands. When private security in shopping centers is understood in light of the concept of "offer privatisation", it raises the question of to what consequences this may lead. I explore two such consequences: Social discrimination and new social needs brought into focus. At the end of the article I discuss the authorities’ answer to the shop owners’ demand for control: Increasing the punishment for shoplifting. On the one hand, this proposal can be understood as an increase in legal protection for property rights. On the other hand, it is unclear whether the police or the private guards have been given the responsibility for its implementation. This lack of clarity is at least partially attributable to the failure of politicians to specify the boarder between public and private responsibility for control.

Summaries fra 89. årgang Nr. 3 September 2002

Birgit Feldtmann

Title in English: The Role of Prosecution: Comparative Perspectives on Legality and Opportunity in the German and the Danish Legal Systems

The article investigates the role of the prosecution service in the German and the Danish systems of criminal justice. It raises the question of the importance and influences of the "opportunity principle" (also known as the "expedience principle") and/or the "legality principle" in both legal systems. The starting point of the investigation is the contradiction that while the two systems are generally understood to represent different categories, there are still significant similarities in the legal framework governing prosecutor discretion and its understanding: The German system is usually described as following the "legality principle", while the Danish system is seen as an example of the "opportunity principle". Nevertheless, a review of the two systems reveals that the prosecution service in both legal systems is in general obliged to prosecute if the evidence suggests that the prosecution will lead to a conviction. In both systems the prosecutor's alternatives for discretion provided by the law are seen as exceptions to this general rule. The article investigates some important aspects of the use of discretion in the German and Danish legal systems and provides some explanations for the abovementioned contradiction. It reveals some similarities between both systems, but it also points out some important differences. One important factor that can be identified for the differences concerning the prosecutor's role and the use of discretion, are the differences between the legal culture of the two legal systems. The article concludes with some thoughts about the impact that such differences in legal culture could have on tendencies to extend cooperation in the field of criminal justice in Europe.

Peter Garde

Title in English: Evidence and Assessment of Evidence Especially in Cases Concerning Sexual Offences against Children

In this lecture the author discusses general questions of proof, esp. in regard to the credibility of children as witnesses in cases concerning sexual assault. Danish, Icelandic, and Swedish practices differ considerably as to the role of the psychologist as expert witness in the criminal trial. The author stresses that the court cannot evade final responsibility as the trier of fact, including responsibility for the credibility of witnesses.

Hanns von Hofer

Title in English: Prison Population and Prison Politics in The Netherlands

The Dutch prison population has increased by a factor of five during the last 25 years. Since there are no accepted general theories to explain this development, the paper starts from the assumption that the increase in the Dutch prison population has served an explicit political objective. A scenario is then presented in the hope of making it easier to understand why the change in Dutch prison politics - from decarceration to incarceration - became politically acceptable.

Summaries fra 89. årgang Nr.4. December 2002

Sakari Melander

Title in English: The principles of criminalization and the prerequisites of limitations to fundamental rights and freedoms

This article deals with the relationship between the principles of criminalization and the prerequisites of limitations to fundamental rights and freedoms, focussing on the situation in Finland. The established principles of criminalization are the principle of safeguarding vital interests, the principle of ultima ratio, and the principle of benefit and harm related evaluation. Sometimes also the principle of legality and the principle of unviolable human dignity are mentioned in this context. Today, the approach of fundamental rights and freedoms is often adopted to the principles of criminalization. Under Section 74 of the Constitution of Finland the Constitutional Law Committee (of the Parliament) shall issue statements of the constitutionality of legislative proposals and other matters brought for its consideration, as well as on their relation to International Human Rights Treaty. The Committee has established certain general prerequisites of limitations to fundamental rights and freedoms: legislation, exactness, acceptability, and unviolable core of fundamental rights and freedoms, proportionality, the protection of the law, and the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms and human rights. The author sets out to analyse the two levels of principles and prerequisites. He concludes that the different elements are in many respects the same, intertwined and complimentary. The prerequisites of fundamental rights and freedoms should always be essential in criminal legislation and criminal policy.

Inga Floto

Title in English: Forms of Capital Punishment: From Ritual to Procedure

This article discusses the consequences of the secularisation of Western society for the death penalty. The author argues that secularisation produced a crisis of legitimacy for the penalty itself, which has prompted a continuous effort to develop ever more scientific and 'humane' methods of inflicting death. It is further argued that these methods have failed to solve the fundamental question underlying the crisis: Can Man take the life of Man, in the name of Man, and still preserve his humanity? The analysis uses a Weberian rationalisation and bureaucratisation approach. Three examples are analysed in depth: The classic, early-modern execution ritual; the introduction of the Guillotine; and the modern American preference for lethal injection.

Yngve Carlsson

Title in English: "A kitchen of prevention": The "welfare municipality's" expanding scope of problem-solving initiatives and the international "program industry"; consequences for local crime prevention.

This article shows how the local welfare state - or welfare municipality - has expanded the number of social problems it addresses (many of which are crime-related) during the last 20 to 30 years. A kitchen metaphor is introduced to illustrate how the main dishes of the welfare municipality have been supplemented by a large number of starters and desserts, which in turn have been supplemented by a great number of problem-solving programs. These programs function as spice and dietary supplement to the dishes. By using examples from preventive work in Norwegian municipalities, the article shows that this development may provide a balanced diet, but may just as often lead to malnutrition or overeating. The problem lies not in any single program, but rather in the overwhelming breadth of programs initiated, the way in which different programs and measures are combined, and the effects that such combinations sometimes have. The author hopes to raise important questions that should be addressed by both researchers and policymakers.