Martin Killias

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...

Tötungsdelikte gehören zu den schwerwiegendsten Delikten mit gravierenden Folgen sowohl für die Angehörigen von Opfern und Tätern/Täterinnen als auch für das Sicherheitsgefühl der Allgemeinbevölkerung. Das vorliegende Buch basiert auf dem Swiss Homicide Monitor, einer Datenbank, die sämtliche vorsätzliche Tötungsdelikte in der Schweiz seit 1990 umf...

In 2007, a new Swiss Criminal Code became legally effective in which short prison sentences were to a large extent replaced by income-based day-fines. In addition, flat fines (fixed sums ranging from 1 to 10,000 Swiss francs) became more widely available as additional sanctions. Both fines and day-fines are to be converted into custody if they rema...

Executive summary/Abstract Background In spite of the large number of anti‐corruption reforms implemented in different countries, there has been little research that empirically and systematically assesses the impact of these efforts. Objectives The main objective of this review is to identify what works in curbing corruption in the public sector...

Die Eintreibung von Bussen und Geldstrafen über die Drohung mit Ersatzfreiheitsstrafen erweist sich als preisgünstig, wie aus einer Studie über den Vollzug im Kanton Zürich hervorgeht. Die Ersatzfreiheitsstrafen sind zudem für die Glaubwürdigkeit des Sanktionensystems unerlässlich. Die Ergebnisse der Studie dürften sich zumindest teilweise auch auf...

Ce texte introductif offre une synthèse de l'évolution de la criminalité sur les deux derniers siècles. Il expose les principes des recherches empiriques sur le crime et la réaction sociale et résume les connaissances sur bon nombre de thèmes d'actualité. La criminalité a-t-elle réellement augmenté? Pourquoi les jeunes sont-ils plus souvent impli...

The nexus between migration and crime has been studied over nearly a century across many countries from all continents. Research has concentrated on comparisons of migrants (or their offspring) with natives. Comparisons between migrants and comparable samples from their countries of origin have not been undertaken so far, however, because data were...

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...

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...

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...

Investment in the prevention of employee offences is relatively low in comparison with resources deployed to combat other types of crime. Chief among the reasons for this deficiency are the difficulty in tackling employee offences from a preventive perspective and the lack of available information to evaluate the efficacy of existing preventive mea...

Not all crimes are reported to the police. The same is true for employee offences experienced by firms. Indeed, companies that are victims of white- or blue-collar crime do not systematically report the incidents to the police or to other official authorities. Victim studies and victimization surveys are recent attempts to provide an insight into t...

This Campbell systematic review compares effects of custodial and non‐custodial sentences on re‐offending. The authors found 14 high‐quality studies, including three randomised controlled trials and two natural experiments. Imprisonment is no more effective than community‐based sanctions in reducing re‐offending. Despite this evidence, almost all s...

Homicide-suicides, the murder of one or several individuals followed by the suicide of the perpetrator, are rare but have devastating effects on families and communities. We did a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing perpetrators of homicide-suicides with perpetrators of simple homicides and suicides and examined the proportion...

Violence is a growing problem worldwide. In Switzerland, interpersonal violence seems to be an increasing problem as well. The aim of the current study was to describe a comprehensive picture of violence in a swiss city with regard to medical and social aspects. A total of 1740 patients injured by violent crimes between April 2004 and January 2011...

Violence is a growing problem worldwide. In Switzerland, interpersonal violence seems to be an increasing problem as well. The aim of the current study was to describe a comprehensive picture of violence in a swiss city with regard to medical and social aspects. A total of 1740 patients injured by violent crimes between April 2004 and January 2011...

The literature on risk factors for joining street gangs has relied mainly on surveys of US youth. This article addresses the consistency of correlates of street gang involvement in several European countries. We utilize self-report surveys of middle school students in 19 European countries. We employ the Eurogang definition of gang membership and a...

Assessing crime committed by employees against firms allows collecting key information to improve existing measures of prevention or to adopt more efficient ones within a specific business. This paper presents an original analysis of the level and features of theft and fraud by employees against firms in the Swiss and Italian commercial sector. It...

Vulnerability has, in research conducted over the last decade, been found to be significantly related to fear of crime. It seems to be particularly helpful in explaining seemingly disproportionate fear levels among women and the elderly, as well as in a few situational contexts. In the present research, a representative sample of Switzerland's popu...

Background Homicide–suicides are rare but catastrophic events. This study examined the epidemiology of homicide-suicide in Switzerland. Methods The study identified homicide–suicide events 1991–2008 in persons from the same household in the Swiss National Cohort, which links census and mortality records. The analysis examined the association of th...

This book presents the first comprehensive analysis of the second International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD-2). An earlier volume, Juvenile Delinquency in Europe and Beyond (Springer, 2010) focused mainly on the findings with regard to delinquency, victimization and substance use in each of the individual participating ISRD-2 countries. The...

The school is an important social context for young people’s socialization as they spend a considerable amount of time there. At school, they make friends and are supervised by their teachers. However, the role of the school in the lives of children is often underestimated. When compulsory education was introduced in most countries in the nineteent...

Most children commit their first offence when they are 12, 13 or 14 years old (see Chap. 3). This is the adolescencet period where children seek autonomy and identity and are increasingly expected to make their own decisions and take more responsibility. Their need for independence means that parents become less important, while school and especial...

There is a growing interest in cross-cultural comparisons both among academics and among policy makers, which is related to general trends such as increasing globalization, the advantage of scientific collaboration in terms of building knowledge, and the need for policy makers to be informed about different kinds of solutions to comparable problems...

Delinquency and victimization are correlated. However, this does not imply that all victims are offenders, or that all offenders become victims of crimes. Elderly people and women especially commit substantially fewer offences, but nonetheless at times may experience victimization. However, among juveniles, the correlation between victimization and...

This final chapter wants to accomplish three objectives. First, we provide an overview of the main findings of the study. Then, in order to place our findings in a wider theoretical context, we report on the results of a multilevel analysis of the data. The central question in the multilevel analysis is to determine if there are similarities or dif...

Since about the 1970s, a number of authors have called attention to the role of neighbourhoods in generating delinquency (Shaw and McKay 1942; Kornhauser 1978; Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Sampson and Laub 1993; Sampson and Raudenbush 1999; Sampson et al. 1997, 1999; Wikström 1998; Morenoff et al. 2001). If one wants to study whether growing up in spe...

Describing the nature and distribution of delinquency in 30 countries is an awesome task. In order to make this task more manageable, we make extensive use of six country clusters based on Esping-Andersen (1990) and Saint-Arnaud and Bernard (2003) (see Chaps. 1 and 2). We will start by presenting some of our results from the total combined sample a...

Regardless of the multiple theories concerning the aetiology or genesis of criminal behaviour in young people, the family, undoubtedly always plays a central role. This chapter will analyze the various ways in which families effect juvenile behaviour. In doing this we will examine the different hypotheses which attempt to explain the impact of fami...

This chapter summarizes European research that covers the various topic areas included in this book. It starts with an overview of European longitudinal studies, which have been conducted far beyond the small number of countries that are routinely included in international reviews of research. The chapter also gives an overview of transnational Eur...

Objectives This study tests whether juveniles’ responses on sensitive topics such as self-reported delinquency, victimization, and substance use are comparable when teachers versus external persons supervise students while filling out online questionnaires. Methods Eighty classes with 1,197 students (9th grade) in eastern Switzerland were randomly...

Alcohol and drug use in relation to criminal activities has a long and colourful history. Several studies convey that problem behaviour such as heavy substance use and criminal behaviour are highly related (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990; Junger- Tas et al. 1992; Franken 2003; Monshouwer et al. 2004). In accordance with these findings, this chapter w...

Violent victimization has often been linked to firearm availability. This research aims to investigate the relationship between firearm availability and the prevalence of violent victimization in several European countries. As firearms legislation differs considerably within European countries, we expect this variation to impact and explain nationa...

The Swiss chapter on homicide is based on the Swiss Homicide Database (SHD), a nationwide database including premeditated homicidal events in Switzerland between 1980 and 2004. Data are based on autopsy registries from legal medicine institutes and completed by police and court files. The database constitutes a full sample of homicide events in Swi...

After the crime drop in the United States, it became almost a dogma that Europe would follow American trends with a delay of some years. This is nothing more than a generalization to crime of a secular observation — namely that Europe ‘always’ follows any American fade with some years behind. We do not want to contest that such parallelisms have of...

The long-term effects of bullying at elementary school have attracted increasing interest in recent years. The present study is based on a cross-sectional survey of over 21,000 young Swiss men. The sample covered about 70 percent of the cohort of Swiss males drafted into the Army in 1997, and born in or around 1977. The instrument covered many retr...

Scholars and policymakers have long debated whether drug policies have any impact on demand for, supply of and prices for illegal substances. Switzerland’s recent experience with changing policies offers an opportunity to study this issue. During the 1990s, the production and sale of this substance became increasingly tolerated. As a result, visibl...

Objective: The study assesses the correlation between self-reported delinquency on one hand, and empathy and cruelty toward animals on the other hand, taking into account personal background, personality characteristics, and social context. It is based on the first representative sample of adolescents that allows studying this issue in Europe. Meth...

Homicide followed by the suicide of the offender is a well-known phenomenon. In most cases, it takes place in the context of the so-called "family tragedies." A recent series of such family tragedies in Switzerland prompted an intensive debate in the media and the Swiss government concerning the Swiss Weapon Law, in particular the requirement to ke...

This study aimed to examine the association between the availability of firearms at home, and the proportion of firearm suicides in Switzerland in an ecological analysis. The data series were analysed by canton and yielded a fairly high correlation (Spearman's rho=0.60). Thus, the association holds also at a sub-national level.

The present study is based on a controlled experiment in Switzerland with 240 subjects randomly assigned either to community service or to electronic monitoring. Measures of outcome include reconvictions, self-reported delinquency and several measures of social integration such as marriage, income and debts. The findings, based on subjects who succ...

The present volume is the first official publication on the second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2), an international collaborative research enterprise with a cross-national description and explanation of juvenile delinquency as its main objective. In general, the cross-national description of the prevalence and incidence of del...

The contributions in this book provide a first glimpse into the rich data from our collaborative international study of self-reported delinquency and victimisation. Each chapter stands on its own and tells its own story, albeit with a common core content: Tables of life-time and last year prevalences of offending. It is tempting to compare the prev...

This chapter presents the main results of the second national self-reported juvenile delinquency survey conducted in Switzerland in 2006. The survey was conducted using the standardized questionnaire developed for the ISRD-2 with the addition of a few questions. This assures comparability with the rest of the countries participating in the ISRD-2 p...

The article presents a study about juvenile delinquency in Switzerland and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The study found that delinquency rates are significantly higher among youth in Switzerland than in Bosnia and Herzegovina, except for group fights, robbery and assault. It revealed that violent victimization rates are relatively higher in Bosnia and H...

Since the 19th century, short custodial sentences were said to foster re-offending through alienating inmates from families and work. The present study is one of the few randomized controlled trials comparing short custodial sentences with community service orders. Between 1993 and 1995, 123 subjects were randomly assigned to community service or i...

This article reports on the first results of the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2), a large international collaborative study of delinquency and victimization of 12—15-year-old students. The analysis is based on a subsample of the data set: 43,968 respondents from 63 cities and 31 countries. The prevalence rates of the maj...

Drug abusers are generally more involved in crime, in particular property crime, than people who are not drug abusers. Substitution programs have been developed in order to improve drug users' quality of life and to decrease their criminal involvement. Several evaluations, but not all, have reported crime reductions following substitution therapies...

Drug abusers are generally more involved in crime, in particular property crime, than people who are not drug abusers. Substitution programs have been developed in order to improve drug users' quality of life and decrease their criminal involvement. Several evaluations, but not all, have reported crime reductions following substitution therapies ba...

Since 1993, Zurich's suburban transport systems have operated without attendants on the trains, and passengers' tickets were checked only sporadically. After increasing worries about crime and passenger safety on suburban trains, it was decided, in order to reduce fear of crime, to reintroduce attendants on all trains after 9 p.m. As well as dealin...

Purpose – This paper updates a review of research on crime among migrants in Switzerland, published in 1997. Methodology – Review of national survey data and statistics published since 1997. Findings – Recent statistics as well as surveys (of victimization and self-reported delinquency) show disproportionate levels of offending among migrants. Data...

Since 1993, Zurich's suburban transport systems have operated without attendants on the trains, and passengers' tickets were checked only sporadically. After increasing worries about crime and passenger safety on suburban trains, it was decided, in order to reduce fear of crime, to reintroduce attendants on all trains after 9 p.m. As well as dealin...

The article presents a special form of a European comparative synopsis. For this case examples have been chosen ranging from administrative or minor (criminal) offences to increasingly serious offences and offenders. In this way it can be comparatively demonstrated how the criminal justice systems studied handle specific cases and whether they do s...