Janne Kivivuori

University of Helsinki | HY · Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy

Research on delinquent behavior has traditionally been a core emphasis of Nordic criminological research. Historically, Nordic cooperation in criminology began with the world’s first ever internationally comparative survey of self-reported delinquency, the Nordic Draftee Research program, 1961–64. Youths of the five Nordic nations tend to manifest...

Objectives This study provides a Finnish replication of a recent Swiss experiment (Walser and Killias: J Exp Criminol 8:17–28, 2012) on the supervision mode effects in computerized delinquency surveys in schools. This study supplements the Swiss study by using individual level randomization and two additional outcome variables: meta-questions of re...

The question as to whether intimate partner homicide (IPH) is committed by average people as opposed to socially disadvantaged persons has both theoretical resonance and practical salience. The gender framework predicts that IPH offenders are socially and individually less disadvantaged than other homicide offenders. The violence framework predicts...

Crime victimization surveys are important sources of trend information and provide data for basic criminological research. In recent years, victim surveys have proliferated and their strengths are well known. The aim of this study is to increase the methodological literature on victim surveys by analysing framing effects, defined as the way the sur...

The third round of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3, 2012-2019) was a large international collaborative study of delinquency and victimization of 12- to 16-year-old students in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades. The ISRD3 data were collected in schools in online or paper and pencil mode. The standard design was a random cluste...

Recent years witnessed an increase in attention to femicide, or the killing of women because of their gender. Prior empirical studies have drawn attention to the prevalence of female homicide victimization, but most have been unable to give a detailed overview of the specific contexts in which women are killed, and to what extent female homicide vi...

Hate crime victimization targeting the victim’s religious identity poses a serious problem for individuals, communities, and societies. This systematic review describes countermeasures to such victimization, aiming for broad descriptive inclusion by canvassing personal adaptations, collective programs, and institutional-governmental policies. Targe...

Homicide as the most serious form of lethal violence has always represented an important research focus in criminology. Much of the existing research, however, is based on aggregated homicide data and is limited to macrolevel analyses. The European Homicide Monitor (EHM) is an initiative promoting standardized international data collection, with th...

Homicide remains a major cause of death globally. The global risk differentials are a persistent public health challenge. Africa’s homicide rate of 13 victims per 100,000 people is markedly higher than the European average (2.2 per 100,000 people). To understand the causes of such large differences, homicide research needs to move from country-leve...

The concept of postsecular society highlights the increasing relevance of religion in social, cultural, and political affairs. Given this trend, criminology should pay increasing attention to how religion is linked to victimization and offending. Since the religion–crime studies have traditionally focused on offending, the research lacunae are bigg...

Detailed, comparative research on firearm violence in Europe is rare. Using data from the European Homicide Monitor, this paper presents the prevalence and characteristics of firearm homicides in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland between 2001 and 2016. Furthermore, we compare firearm to non-firearm homicides to assess the de...

Key societal macro-trends, such as immigration and the increasing salience of post-secular and identity-based religiosity, are converging to increase the relevance of religion in everyday life. Such developments call for a reassessment of the religion–victimisation link. We analyse the prevalence and severity patterns of hate victimisation in diffe...

This chapter explores if and how the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the patterns of violent crime in Finland. We focus on recorded violent crime in 2020, using the three preceding years 2017–2019 as a comparison base. Most examined crime types were more frequent in 2020 than in the comparison period. The decrease of public place assaults was an excep...

Our study draws from a natural experiment created by the school lockdowns in Finland during the 2020 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic to compare at-school and home-based responses to an online youth crime survey. Using our quasi-experimental design, we examine how at-home responses during the Covid-19 lockdown affected the sample composition...

This study examines homicide trends in seven European countries – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden and Switzerland – all of which manifested a substantial drop in homicide mortality between 1990 and 2016. By using data from the European Homicide Monitor, a coding scheme created to enable cross-country comparisons, combin...

This document describes the background and methodology of the fourth round of the International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD4). Drawing from the fields of criminology, public health and cross-national methodology, the ISRD is an ongoing multi-national research study that aims to describe and explain adolescents’ experiences with crime and vi...

Nordic Homicide in Deep Time draws a unique and detailed picture of developments in human interpersonal violence and presents new findings on rates, patterns, and long-term changes in lethal violence in the Nordics. Conducted by an interdisciplinary team of criminologists and historians, the book analyses homicide and lethal violence in northern Eu...

In prior research, intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization has been predominantly studied as distinct from other forms of violent victimization. As a result, relatively little is known about IPV victimization in relation to other violent victimization and the extent to which same people tend to be both IPV and other violent victims. In this s...

In this article, we examine the correlates of fear of violence in the cross-media landscape. The study draws on the Finnish National Crime Victim Survey ( n = 6,141, respondents aged 15–74 years). First, we examine from what information and media sources respondents receive information on violent crime. We then examine how consumption of different...

An extensive body of criminological research has shown that criminal and violent behaviour manifests time patterns in terms of daily, weekly and annual cycles. This is consistent with criminological routine activities theory. Can we generalize these patterns to historical periods? In this article, we draw on a recently created unique dataset, cover...

Due to drastic changes in the contemporary media environment, criminology needs to examine how the experience of violence is shaped by the emerging cross-media context. We conducted a qualitative focus group study (N = 24) to explore conversations about mediated violence experiences and crime media literacy in Finland, which manifests as an advance...

This study provides an overview of homicide clearance in four West European countries: Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Using data from the European Homicide Monitor, employing similar definitions and uniform coding schemes, this study allowed for unique crosscountry comparisons in factors influencing differences in homicide cleara...

Objectives To examine short-term associations between offending and victimization using daily data on criminal offenses. We also examine the within-individual association between several types of offenses and victimization and see whether incidents closer together in time are more likely reflect revenge motives. Method We use total data on all vic...

The concluding chapter discusses why this monograph limits itself to the presentation of methodological findings, on the one hand, and to descriptive findings about offending and victimization, on the other. That is, methodological and descriptive analysis are a necessary precursor to the sort of theory-testing that forms the central ambition of IS...

The ISRD has two distinguishing features as a comparative study of youth crime and victimization: (1) the large number and cultural diversity of participating countries and (2) the explicitly comparative design. This chapter provides an overview of the core data features of the ISRD, including listing of participating countries, sample size, respon...

This brief chapter reports on how ISRD3 has incorporated a test of the impact of cultural variability on self-report responses to questions about offending. The results show that concerns about cultural variability (in the social desirability related to admitting delinquent behavior) are empirically supported and that caution is warranted when maki...

Chapter 4 shifts the focus from young people’s offending to their experience as victims of crime. This chapter presents initial ISRD3 findings on victimization from 27 countries. The chapter presents data for (1) victimization in the previous year and (2) whether the police were notified of this victimization. Patterns of victimization are presente...

This introductory chapter presents a brief background to the third round of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), an internationally collaborative study of delinquency among 7th, 8th, and 9th graders. The three core objectives of the ISRD are: (1) to measure the prevalence and incidence of offending and victimization; (2) to test...

We examined cross-national variation in the gender differential in offending, which is often referred to as the gender gap in crime. Analyses were directed toward two empirical questions: 1) Is the gender gap narrower in less patriarchal sociocultural settings, and if so, 2) is this outcome a result of higher levels of offending on the part of girl...

This Brief presents the first major release of findings from the Third International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3). ISRD is a major international research collaboration that now covers some 35 countries. It surveys young people aged 12 to 16 in their schools, asking about their experience of crime – both as offenders and as victims – and ab...

European nations are undergoing increasing cultural and religious pluralization. Yet, we know little about how crime victimization relates to religion. Different theories suggest that religion might protect from or, on the contrary, be a risk factor for victimization. Drawing on a youth survey (ISRD–3), we examine Finland and Switzerland, two natio...

This presentation reflects preliminary findings from the European Homicide Monitor in the period 2009-2014 in three European countries: Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. It provides a detailed overview of the case, victim and perpetrator characteristics of intimate partner homicide.

Lethal violence is often seen as the tip of the iceberg and homicide perpetrators are seen as manifesting the most extreme number of various risk factors. This article explores whether that is the case. Using a unique data set combining data from several administrative registers with a nationally representative sample of different types of police-r...

Today, the Finnish criminologist and sociologist Veli Verkko (1893–1955) is remembered and cited because of ‘Verkko’s laws’, which predict cross-sectional and temporal regularities between homicide rates and patterns. This article describes Verkko’s criminological thought more broadly and situates him in the historical divide between bio-criminolog...

Much of the existing research on hate crime focuses on the perspective of victims, while relatively little is known of the offenders. This study examines the prevalence of hate-motivated offending in the form of assaults and bullying, and variables that may explain some of the influences for such behaviour. It compares hate-motivated offenders to b...

We examined different forms of victimization experiences in relation to psychopathic features and whether these associations differed in boys and girls among 4855 Finnish school adolescents aged 15–16 years. Psychopathic features were measured with the Antisocial Process Screening Device- Self Report (APSD-SR). Victimization was assessed with quest...

The few existing studies on the association between debt problems and crime have suggested that the two are correlated, but the causal nature and direction of this association has been unclear. By using longitudinal register data (N = 20,696) from Finland on young adults’ debt default and crime, we examine the potentially reciprocal association bet...

The history of criminology is examined comparatively for four countries or regions: the United States, Latin America, Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom. Each case history considers a common set of analytic dimensions: origin and takeoff (time, discipline, political context); changing shapes (themes, theoretical orientations, data); changing organ...

Revenge is a well-recognised motive for crime and violence. In sociological research, this topic has been pursued primarily in ethnographic studies of street offenders or gang conflicts. Psychologists have studied revenge behaviour experimentally in laboratory settings and revenge ideation with community samples. Despite these contributions, we kno...

After a high-profile homicide case, there is often discussion in the media on whether or not the killing was caused or facilitated by a psychotropic medication. Antidepressants have especially been blamed by non-scientific organizations for a large number of senseless acts of violence, e.g., 13 school shootings in the last decade in the U.S. and Fi...

Differences in the crime involvement of immigrants and the native population have been a major topic in criminology for decades. This interest stems from the fact that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics of many European countries. Our study compares delinquency among native and immigrant youth in Finland. The analysis is based o...

We investigated the prevalence of juvenile weapon carrying and psychosocial and personality-related risk factors for carrying different types of weapons in a nationally representative, population-based sample of Finnish adolescents. Specifically, we aimed to investigate psychopathic-like personality features as a risk factor for weapon carrying. Th...

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between sleep, including both qualitative and quantitative aspects, and delinquent behaviour while controlling for psychopathic features of adolescents and parental supervision at bedtime. We analysed data from a nationally representative sample of 4855 Finnish adolescents (mean age 15.3 years,...

There is a distinct lack of knowledge about how the rise of private security relates to young people in adversarial encounters. Prior studies suggest that the policing of young people by police is a common occurrence and social biases exist. However, policing of young people by private security guards has gained much less attention. Drawing on a la...

The Antisocial Process Screening Device- Self-Report (APSD-SR) is a self-report measure for assessment of psychopathic traits in adolescents. The present study aimed to investigate the factor structure and internal consistency of the APSD-SR in a sample of 4855 Finnish community adolescents. A three-factor structure with factors representing impuls...

AimsTo examine gradual change in debt problems, divorce and income among men in Finland before and after a first conviction for driving under the influence (DUI).Design and SettingA register-based longitudinal study conducted in Finland between 1999 and 2013.ParticipantsA nationally representative sample of 70 659 Finnish males born between 1918 an...

Background Individuals with high psychopathy scores are capable of providing valid self-reports on their own personality traits, but there have been no empirical studies of the effect of psychopathic features on responding to sensitive survey questions about specific behaviours.AimsThe aim of this study is to investigate any relationship between fa...

Domestic violence often remains a hidden crime. After a reform to the Finnish Penal Code in 2011, the police are now required to investigate petty assaults that occur between intimate partners even without the victim’s consent. In the year following the reform, Finland saw a substantial increase in police-recorded domestic violence. Given that actu...

Sociological theorists have suggested, at least in Western affluent societies, a societal change toward increasing sensitivity to violence. Possible causes include increasing affluence, security, medical victories over infectious diseases, increasing life expectancy, and feminization of society. A trend toward increasing sensitivity could have impl...

The article presents a quantitative look at the European homicide research published in selected main international journals in the field of social science criminology (SSC) since 2000. Building on our previous, mainly narrative work (Kivivuori et al., 2012), we use search string targeting article titles in selected SSC journals. The aim is to capt...

In Finland, more than one in four young females and almost one in three young males experienced some type of adversarial police contact in a year. The high prevalence of adversarial police contact among contemporary youth highlights the need to study the nature of the contacts and labelling theory’s hypothesis of control bias. Consequently, we deve...

This article examines whether the relationship between unemployment and criminal offending depends on the type of crime analyzed. We rely on fixed‐effects regression models to assess the association between changes in unemployment status and changes in violent crime, property crime, and driving under the influence (DUI) over a 6‐year period. We als...

We examined whether the occurrence of violence changed among Finnish adolescents between 1999 and 2009. The study was based on the nationwide Adolescent Health and Lifestyle Survey from samples of 12- to 18-year-olds. The number of respondents was 8136 in 1999 and 5516 in 2009. The proportion of adolescents reporting violence was 7.9% in 1999 and 6...

Due to differences in definitions, data sources and criminal justice procedures, comparing homicides between countries is not without problems. To overcome these limitations, we have constructed a joint European Homicide Monitor (EHM). So far, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden constitute the basis of the database. In this contribution, we give an...

Although research on business crime victimization has increased in recent years, few studies have explained variation in the crime risk of businesses. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of retail premises (N=1197), this study describes the prevalence and correlates of business crime victimization in Finland, using England and Wales as a...

Research on socioeconomic differences in violent victimization has relied on surveys. Nationally representative register-based data sets, increasingly used in Nordic criminology, have not been used in such research. We analyse socioeconomic differences in violent victimization in Finland using both survey and register-based data, and assess whether...

While low socio-economic status (SES) is generally accepted as a risk factor for violence, some have argued that intimate partner violence (IPV) is a ‘classless’ crime. We examine the effects of SES and prior criminal record on different types of police-reported violence committed in 2005–07 by Finnish men using a register-based general population...

The chapter deals with homicidal crime in Finland. It is based on existing research literature, the data of the Finnish Homicide Monitoring System (FHMS), and the main statistical data sources. Homicidal crime has been a central topic in modern Finnish criminology and forensic psychiatry since the early-1900s; the existing studies on homicide trend...

Data from the 1986 Northern Finland Birth Cohort Study (n = 4,645) were used to examine the influence of mid‐adolescent (age 15) school outcomes on late‐adolescent (ages 17–19) risk of criminal conviction. Consistent with social‐developmental theories of offending, we found that poor academic performance and reduced school attachment increase the r...

Since the 1960s, homicides against children have decreased dramatically in Finland. The article examines this decrease by disaggregating the trend in five child homicide types between 1960-1974 and 2003-2009. There were several factors reducing the motivation and opportunity to commit most child homicide types during the period. Some were results o...

The purpose of this proposed chapter is twofold. First, we expand on the work of LaFree (1999), by compiling a summary of the cross-national research on social structure and homicide. Second, we provide a critical assessment of the status of this body of literature, presenting its strengths and weaknesses, noting points of convergence and divergenc...

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan väkivallan ja tapaturmien välistä suhdetta kahdesta teoreettisesta näkökulmasta. Kriminologiasta otetaan esiin itsekontrolliteoria, jonka mukaan heikolla itsekontrollilla varustettu henkilö sortuu keskimääräistä useammin rikoksiin ja hän myös joutuu onnettomuuksiin keskimääräistä useammin. Tapaturmataipumusteoria pu...

This book presents a history of the self-report crime survey as a method of criminological inquiry, describing how it was born within a distinct moral framework by pioneers out to show that crime was very prevalent and, therefore, normal. It recounts how, during the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of U.S. criminologists discovered the method of the self...

This book presents a history of the self-report crime survey as a method of criminological inquiry, describing how it was born within a distinct moral framework by pioneers out to show that crime was very prevalent and, therefore, normal. It recounts how, during the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of U.S. criminologists discovered the method of the self...

This book presents a history of the self-report crime survey as a method of criminological inquiry, describing how it was born within a distinct moral framework by pioneers out to show that crime was very prevalent and, therefore, normal. It recounts how, during the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of U.S. criminologists discovered the method of the self...

This book presents a history of the self-report crime survey as a method of criminological inquiry, describing how it was born within a distinct moral framework by pioneers out to show that crime was very prevalent and, therefore, normal. It recounts how, during the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of U.S. criminologists discovered the method of the self...

This book presents a history of the self-report crime survey as a method of criminological inquiry, describing how it was born within a distinct moral framework by pioneers out to show that crime was very prevalent and, therefore, normal. It recounts how, during the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of U.S. criminologists discovered the method of the self...

This book presents a history of the self-report crime survey as a method of criminological inquiry, describing how it was born within a distinct moral framework by pioneers out to show that crime was very prevalent and, therefore, normal. It recounts how, during the 1930s and 1940s, a handful of U.S. criminologists discovered the method of the self...

Five important changes can be detected in the homicidal crime of Finland and Sweden. From the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth, concurring with the establishing of the modern centralized state, homicide rates dropped significantly. In the long term, the local variation in Swedish homicide rates decreased, probably because of the rise o...

Despite decades of research on the association between socio-economic status (SES) and crime, its strength and nature remain contested. Using a unique dataset combining data from several administrative registers with a nationally representative sample of 28,485 19 to 30-year-old Finnish citizens, we examine SES differences in violent offences, prop...

Due to differences in definitions, data sources and criminal justice procedures, comparing homicides between countries is not without problems. To overcome these limitations, we have constructed a joint European Homicide Monitor (EHM). So far, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden constitute the basis of the database. In this contribution, we give an...

Finland is a country in northern Europe with a total population of 5.3 million and a land area of 304,000 km2. The population density is 17 persons per square kilometre, and about 60% of the inhabitants live in the cities. The size of these cities is rather small compared to the European average. Finland has only three cities with more than 200,000...

This article examines the correlates of self-assessed re-offending probability (SARP) in a sample of Finnish short-term prisoners. The research focuses on the role of factors related to social control when individual self-control is held constant, and explores how selected prison activities relate to SARP. The associations between social control an...

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the number of students who are placed in special needs education (SNE) groups within the school system. Consistent with this international trend, the percentage of Finnish students in SNE groups rose from 2.9% to 7.7% from 1995 to 2006. The inclusion of SNE groups in school-based delinquency rese...

In this article, we present findings of crime media research conducted in Finland during recent years. As this body of research has mainly been published in Finnish, the core results have not been available for international audiences until now. The amount of crime news reporting has consistently increased both in the newspapers and in television n...

Cross-national studies of homicide are dominated by theories that focus on inequality and other structural factors as the source of variation in the level of lethal violence. As a nation with a comparatively high homicide rate in the presence of a strong welfare state, Finland represents a puzzle to this paradigm. The apparent weakness of the struc...

Historical criminology has described the underworld role of Fagin—an adult who forces, seduces or teaches minors to commit crimes for him. In contemporary debates, it is sometimes feared that adolescents cunningly evade criminal law by recruiting younger children to commit offences for them. The present article reports findings from three studies c...

Interpersonal trust has recently emerged at the centre of research in social science as an important component of social capital. Earlier, it has been theorized that exposure to media cultivates a suspicious and distrusting ‘mean–world’ outlook on life (cultivation theory). In this article, we aim to bind these separate but obviously interconnected...

In this article, we explore the relationship between the use of crime news and fear of violence through multivariate analyses. Our main objective is to examine whether exposure to crime news is related to avoidance behaviour and fear of crime when personal and vicarious victimization experiences, as well as a number of other relevant factors, are h...