Lorena Molnar

• PhD in criminology
• University of Lausanne

This paper tests a situational hypothesis which postulates that the number of femicides should increase as an unintended consequence of the COVID-19-related lockdowns. The monthly data on femicides from 2017 to 2020 collected in six Spanish-speaking countries—Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Panama, Mexico, and Spain—and analyzed using threshold models...

Criminologists have monitored the coronavirus pandemic’s effects on crime and criminal justice since the pandemic’s outbreak. Nonetheless, vulnerable and difficult-to-reach populations have been understudied thus far. This study sheds light on the experiences of sex workers (SW) during the first year of the coronavirus in Switzerland, a country whe...

This article explores the routine precautions taken by sex workers (SW) in Switzerland, a country in which sex work is a legal activity. It is based on approximately 1100 h of non-systematic participant observation spread over 18 months and 14 semi-structured interviews with indoor and outdoor SW. The findings show that SW use a series of routine p...

Except for the knowledge that the Roma people endure harsh conditions and are victims of discrimination, scarce criminological research has given detailed attention to further victimisation or offending among the Romanies. Identifying articles in the browsers Web of Science, Google Scholar and Google, we reviewed European publications (1997-2020) i...

Purpose: This scoping review investigates crime victimization prevention interventions among sex workers. Materials and methods: Using the PRISMA method, we reviewed 11 papers referring to 8 studies that targeted the reduction of sex work-ers' victimization. Results: Effective strategies identified include community mobilization , peer-led outreach...

The European Roma population faces violence and discrimination, but the causes of their victimisation are not well understood. This study used a multi-theoretical framework to analyse data from a representative sample of 2,913 Roma surveyed in European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey II. The results showed that police stops perceived as...

The Roma are the largest European minority and among the groups that have suffered the most dreadful persecution and trauma in the past that persists today. This chapter addresses the fieldwork experiences of two early career researchers who conducted criminological and socio-legal studies on several Roma groups in urban and rural settings in two c...

Preceding these conclusions are the experiences of 55 researchers from 40 Universities and research centers across four continents. These scholars have accumulated a collective experience of over 700 years in fieldwork, starting as early as the 1980s. Rather than a mere compilation of authors’ experiences, we aimed to undertake a comprehensive anal...

Research with sex workers presents a series of methodological and ethical challenges that need careful consideration. Sex workers are a heterogenous group that has been studied by criminologists mostly in countries where sex work is illegal. Here, we address the methodological and ethical considerations of conducting research as an early career res...

Cette étude examine l’impact des évènements traumatiques subis durant l’enfance et l’adolescence (ETEA) sur les facteurs de risque liés à la délinquance sexuelle à l’âge adulte. Elle se base sur un échantillon canadien de 256 individus judiciarisés pour des crimes sexuels au Canada. Les résultats suggèrent que la présence, la durée et la diversité...

This paper explores antifa activists’ use of doxing on Twitter against individuals perceived as alt-right militants. Following the principles of Grounded Theory, we collected 4690 tweets published by antifa users between September 2019 and September 2020 and analysed a random subsample of 1638. Results show that antifa users perceive alt-right acti...

This Ph.D. dissertation is presented under the form of ten scientific articles and a summary report of their main findings. The articles aim to apply opportunity-based theories −such as the Routine activities, Lifestyle, and Situational crime prevention theories− to the study of the victimisation, offending and drug use of vulnerable and hard-to-re...

While European borders were closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe witnessed the exodus of Romanian seasonal workers to Germany. Although both countries’ governments agreed to allow this under the condition of the strictest adherence to the sanitary restrictions and workers’ rights, soon after, the media began to report situations of non-a...

Many studies have analysed the violence to which sex workers (SWs) are exposed in countries where prostitution is criminalised, but violence in sex work when it is a legal and freelance activity has seldom been studied. This study is based on non-systematic participant observation and 14 interviews conducted with cisgender and transgender freelance...

Movements such as #MeToo have shown how an online trend can become the vehicle for collectively sharing personal experiences of sexual victimisation that often remains unreported to the criminal justice system. These social media trends offer new opportunities to social scientists who investigate complex phenomena that, despite existing since time...

Past research on violence against sex workers has contributed to our understanding of this phenomenon yet, often do not offer concrete preventative measures. The current study aims to investigate this issue through an environmental criminology perspective, and to identify measures that can be implemented to decrease violence through a situational c...

This paper aims to shed light on the difficulties faced by sex workers (SW) during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research was carried out in collaboration with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) supporting SW in canton Vaud, Switzerland. Drawing on the idea, developed by Scoular (2015), that the law is not sufficient to address the problems faced...

This paper analyzes the correlates of traditional (burglary, vehicle theft, theft from vehicles, and pickpocketing) and online property crime (data theft and online fraud), with particular attention given to the relation between them and the risk of multiple victimizations. Data are gathered from a large and representative victimization survey cond...

Research addressing the perception of security of immigrants in Switzerland dates back to the 2000s. Using data from a victimisation survey conducted in Lugano, Switzerland (N = 7885), this study investigates the security perception of immigrant communities and its correlates. In contrast to previous findings, the analyses suggest that a higher per...

Este artículo contrasta una hipótesis situacional que postula que en 2020 el número de femicidios debería haber aumentado como consecuencia involuntaria de los confinamientos impuestos para evitar la propagación de la pandemia de COVID-19. Los datos mensuales de femicidios entre 2017 y 2020, recogidos en seis países de habla castellana —Argentina,...

The coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected people of all social strata, and continues to do so, but its effect has been the most severe on members of the most precarious populations. In this exploratory study conducted in Switzerland, the specific situation of homeless people, a particularly vulnerable population, is examined from a criminolo...

This document summarizes the main findings of the 2021 Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics on Prison Populations, better known under the acronym SPACE I. The Covid-19 pandemic contributed to reducing the prison population in Europe between January 2020 and January 2021, consolidating a ten-year-long trend in most European states. Key factors...

This article highlights the research potential of the European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EU-MIDIS), which the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights had conducted twice across Europe by 2021. It begins with an overview of the EU-MIDIS project before concentrating on the second survey (EU-MIDIS II) conducted in 2015 and 2016...

This paper discusses a campaign called “We don’t buy a body but a service”, part of a crime prevention program in the canton of Vaud (Switzerland). The campaign aimed to prevent antisocial behaviour towards prostitutes by encouraging population's more realistic view of the sex work and by minimising the excuses for crime -the neutralisation techniq...

Les Roms forment la plus grande minorité ethnique en Europe, mais peu d’études se sont focalisées sur la délinquance et la victimisation au sein de cette communauté. Cet article présente une recherche exploratoire portant sur la victimisation et la délinquance des jeunes Roms roumains en Suisse romande. L’étude suit une démarche mixte qui combine 1...

Cette étude a pour but d'explorer les consommations de produits psychoactifs et de médicaments des travailleuses du sexe (TdS) dans le canton de Vaud, en Suisse, durant l'année 2017. Nous avons mené une étude de prévalence sur un échantillon de convenance (N=91), et récolté les données par le biais d'un questionnaire. Les TdS ont reporté avoir cons...

The Roma people are the largest minority in Europe and, since centuries, have suffered discrimination and hate crimes which persist currently. This paper analyzes 4,136 comments (2016–2020) about the Roma posted on an online open-access forum. Our findings suggest that the factors influencing Romanians’ hostility against the Roma are: (1) the gener...

Esta edición especial del Boletín Criminológico recoge nueve de las mejores contribuciones presentadas durante el II Encuentro de Jóvenes Investigadores en Criminología, que tuvo lugar en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Málaga (España) los días 13 y 14 de febrero de 2020. Tras presentar las nueve contribuciones, este artículo discute el...

Esta edición especial del Boletín Criminológico recoge nueve de las mejores contribuciones presentadas durante el II Encuentro de Jóvenes Investigadores en Criminología, que tuvo lugar en la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Málaga (España) los días 13 y 14 de febrero de 2020. Tras presentar las nueve contribuciones, este artículo discute el...

PreVist is a project created and implemented by the association Fleur de Pavé, a non-governmental organisation engaged in sex work risk minimisation in the canton of Vaud (Switzerland). Based on situational crime prevention strategies and existing research on the victimisation and stigmatisation of sex workers, this project aims to reduce the victi...

El presente trabajo criminológico es un estudio cualitativo sobre la victimización de las trabajadoras sexuales en la provincia de Málaga (España), donde a través de la entrevista en profundidad se analizan importantes aspectos, centrándonos en qué tipo de delitos sufren las prostitutas mientras ejercen su trabajo. A raíz de los resultados obtenido...