Aims: Involvement in minor drug offences at an early age can be a signal of the onset of a potential drug issue. This is why Sweden has considered the criminalization of personal use as a strategy to deter the progression of drug use. This study investigated how the judiciary and social services succeed in identifying and providing support to adolescents convicted of drug offences. Methods: Characteristics of all 15–17-year-olds convicted of offences against the Act on Penal Law on Narcotics (drug offence) in 2017 were examined using Swedish longitudinal registry data (N = 1847). Furthermore, the decision process rendering different legal responses was examined by use of social services files for a subsample of 189 adolescents. Results: About two-thirds of the adolescents had their first conviction for the index offence and the majority received legal responses consisting of rehabilitative measures. Background factors indicated that those with severe drug and criminal issues encounter risk factors relating to their upbringing (e.g., neuropsychiatric disorders were notably more prevalent in this group than among similar peers). Around 61% of adolescents were reconvicted for new drug offences during the three-year study period, but with variations among subgroups. Younger boys who received rehabilitative measures had lower reconviction rates compared to those without. Conclusions: Addressing the underlying factors contributing to adolescent drug offences requires a multifaceted approach that prioritizes early intervention, personalized support, and collaboration across systems to promote positive outcomes and reduce recidivism rates.

Crime is unequally distributed with respect to both who becomes involved in offending and the frequency with which these individuals offend. However, we know less about how these properties of the crime distribution have themselves changed over time. In cases where crime levels have changed, have these changes been general, affecting all social groups equally, or have they been more focused on certain social groups? We examine the changing social composition of known offenders using Swedish administrative data to determine whether inequality in offending is increasing or decreasing. Our analyses are based on a multicohort approach. The results show that the proportion of convicted men has decreased. Those who are convicted for crimes have therefore become an increasingly selected group. This has also entailed that they have increasingly come to be made up of groups with less resourceful socio-economic backgrounds, which in turn has fostered a more unequal distribution of crime.

It is widely acknowledged that individuals with out-of-home care (OHC) experiences, including foster-family care and residential care, face an increased risk of poor labour market attachment during emerging adulthood. However, limited understanding exists regarding how this attachment, conceptualized here as ‘not in employment, education, or training’ (NEET), evolves beyond young adulthood and the degree to which this development is marked by persistence or desistance. Using group-based trajectory modelling and multinomial regression on population-based register data for over 650,000 Swedish men and women (including approximately 14,000 with OHC experience), followed from birth to age 40, the results indicate that OHC-experienced individuals, especially those first placed as teenagers, exhibit a substantially higher risk of persistent NEET compared to peers without OHC experience. Nevertheless, the majority of OHC-experienced individuals followed pathways characterized by desistance. Implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.

Prior literature has linked experiences of out-of-home care (OHC, foster family care, and residential care) to numerous negative outcomes. However, less is known about the relationship between OHC experience and victimization, particularly compared to same-aged adolescents from the majority population. This study addresses this gap using Swedish repeated cross-sectional data from the Stockholm School Survey (n>140,000), of which approximately 1% report living in foster family care (FFC), to explore the prevalence of victimization and changes over time among youth in FFC compared to their non-FFC peers. Results from multivariable regression analyses indicate that FFC youth, especially girls, have substantially higher risks of various types of victimization, although at higher levels, FFC-experienced youth generally followed trends observed in peers. However, care-experienced girls showed an upward trend in threats and at least one type of victimization, contrary to a downward trend among peers. Implications for research and ongoing debates are discussed.

Objectives This study examines the relationship between incarceration time and post-release recidivism among first-time incarcerated adult offenders.

Methods A quasi-experimental design was adopted consisting of three policy reforms that were treated as separate natural experiments. While holding imposed sentence length constant, these policy reforms either decreased or increased the required share of a sentence inmates needed to be incarcerated before being eligible for parole. Data consisted of large-scale administrative records containing all convictions for the Swedish cohorts born in 1958 and later.

Results Results indicate that neither increased nor decreased incarceration time had a statistically significant effect on post-release recidivism, irrespective of how recidivism was measured.

Conclusions Findings reveal little evidence for incarceration time having a criminogenic or specific preventive effect on post-release recidivism.

Since the 1990s, Sweden has witnessed a steady increase in the control measures focused on drug offences. These changes are results of political dynamics once pushed by centre-right parties but thereafter embraced by Social Democrats in government. The article examines the structure of police controls of drug offences and the extent to which these controls have focused on different sociodemographic groups during the period 1995-2015. The study shows that this intensified control of minor drug crimes has resulted in successively larger proportions of youths from deprived areas being forced to provide samples of body fluids. The criminalization of drug use constitutes an example of the significance of crime policy for both crime levels and the composition of the offender population.

Inte bara individuella faktorer spelar roll för brottsligheten utan även de förutsättningar som ges av det omgivande samhället. Till de senare hör strukturella förhållanden, som exempelvis utbildningssystem och arbetsmarknad, men också, och med mer direkt koppling till brottslighet, tillfällesstruktur och hur samhället ser på, prioriterar och bemöter brottsligheten. I detta kapitel intresserar vi oss för förändringar i a) ungdomars brottslighet, b) hur brottsligheten skiljer sig mellan olika grupper av unga, respektive c) hur det på lite längre sikt går för de ungdomar som begått brott. Vi gör det utifrån en så kallad multikohortansats där olika födelsekohorter, det vill säga personer födda samma år, följs över tid. Den äldsta födelsekohorten vi studerar utgörs av födda år 1975 och den yngsta av födda år 2000. Det rör sig alltså om kohorter som vuxit upp vid olika tidpunkter och, eftersom samhället förändras, under delvis olika strukturella förhållanden. Har det även inneburit variationer i ungas brottslighet och hur det går för de unga som begått brott på längre sikt?

Precarious housing and criminal behaviour are both important elements in processes of marginalization and cumulative disadvantage. It is well known that housing eviction primarily affects the weakest groups in society. In this article we ask if housing eviction has an independent effect on subsequent criminality and if the effect varies across different types of crime (utilitarian, violent and drug crime). Using propensity score matching on administrative register data covering all housing evictions in Sweden 2009, linked with crime registers and registers containing other relevant background information, we find that eviction increases the conviction rates for all analysed crime types, utilitarian crime in particular.

This study investigates Swedish conviction trends by individuals’ immigrant background for the period 1973–2017. The central research question is whether relative differences in conviction levels have increased, declined or remained unchanged over recent decades. This question is examined in part using a traditional cross-sectional approach, and in part using a cohort-based approach. All results are presented by gender, and results for the cohort-based approach also by holding socioeconomic background constant. The results show that conviction levels have decreased, to a greater extent among men than among women, irrespective of immigrant background. The level of overrepresentation among those born in Sweden to foreign-born parents has increased somewhat, while the overrepresentation of those born abroad has decreased towards the end of the period examined.

Against the backdrop of an overall declining crime trend our overarching objective is to explore whether this development has concealed any degree of divergence between participation and frequency in crime. We employ Swedish longitudinal data comprising 25 complete birth cohorts born between 1960 and 1984 and followed to age 30 using convictions data. The results show a complex pattern of change, by which the crime rate partly conceals divergent processes between participation and frequency. In particular, among the males we find a consistent decrease in the size of the convicted population, whereas the frequency of crimes among convicted offenders has increased across cohorts born during the early 1970s and later. We discuss the results against both behavioral and reactional mechanisms and conclude that future crime trends research should consider a broad range of criminal career parameters which cannot be discerned using aggregate crime data.