This article analyses 34 Swedish birth cohorts with regard to their participation in crime as measured by data from the convictions database maintained by Statistics Sweden. Most existing cohort studies are limited to one or a few cohorts. By contrast, the present study includes 34 cohorts, i.e. all persons born in Sweden between 1958 and 1991. The article discusses methodological problems associated with this type of approach and examines the possibility of making forecasts. The central results are that the number of males with a criminal record has decreased, whereas the number of females has remained fairly stable. Forecasts indicate that the cohorts' participation in crime will continue to decrease. Research and policy implications of the findings are outlined. It is proposed to introduce cohort statistics as a standard branch within regular criminal justice statistics.

This paper analyses four historical time series on homicide, assault, robbery and theft from Finnish and Swedish vital and conviction (judicial) statistics. It is suggested that long-term criminal justice statistics – at least in Finland and Sweden  – are highly usable and that they add relevant basic knowledge to important current criminological and crime policy issues. It is concluded that law reforms are greatly influential in terms of changes in the sanctioning system (strong evidence of policy impact); but law reforms do not contribute to lasting changes in the development of crime as measured by conviction statistics (no substantiated evidence of crime impact). In the long run, crime seems to persistently evade the manifold legislative efforts to ‘combat’ it.

1. This short presentation discussed the impact of the death penalty on deadly violence in Sweden, Finland, (Denmark, Norway), the US, and Eastern Europe during varying time periods. 2. The simple result is that the application as well as the abolition of the death penalty in these countries evidently exerted no impact on the level or developmentof deadly violence during the periods studied. 3. Thus, the use of the death penalty as an efficient deterrent is not proved as an empirical fact in these countries. 4. The use of the death penalty appears first and foremost as a question of values and political considerations. 5. The death penalty has been abolished in all the countries studied here – with the exception of the US. 6. Alcohol consumption and political instability appear as strong determinants of deadly violence.

Bidraget tar upp en teoretisk och principiell diskussion kring vad som är möjligt respektive önskvärt beträffande samhällets åtgärder mot ungdomsbrottsligheten.

This research note questions the common practice of ad hoc chart reading without formulating a sensible statistical model of the data beforehand and argues that the random walk model should not be overlooked when analyzing time series of crime data.