Sex trafficking narratives tend to follow the same storyline: a young, female victim is lured into sexual slavery by a foreign offender, and in the end, she is rescued by a Western hero. This article examines the sex trafficking narrative, and its accompanying characters in popular media, with a specific focus on the victim. It combines sex trafficking research with theories about folk tales and concepts of purity and the sacred. Empirically, the article explores the narratives of sex trafficking in six internationally influential films and books. The analysis creates an understanding of why one particular victim, and one metanarrative of sex trafficking, continue to dominate contemporary popular media. It traces the moralistic narrative continuities of sex trafficking, and creates an understanding of why we keep repeating this particular narrative, and why we seem to need it.

This article explores how Swedish lay-judges assess victims’ credibility in district court. Previous studies have explored how biases and emotional expressions impact credibility assessments. Adding to this, the present study analyses how lay-judges assess courtroom credibility from an intersectional perspective. Based on 24 in-depth interviews with lay-judges, the study explores three intertwined layers of credibility: appearances, narratives and emotions. The analysis concludes that these layers actualize balancing acts for both victims and the lay-judges assessing them. These layers of credibility can compound for victims, making them particularly credible in the eyes of the lay-judges, especially if and when they perform victimhood in line with expectations set by their intersectional characteristics. 

Drawing on observations in Swedish district courts, this chapter explores how masculinities and victimhood are performed in ways that contradict or underscore the assigned roles of plaintiff and defendant. Three themes showing how men both seek and avoid victimhood in court are analysed: heroic rescuers; capable victims; and fearful men. Heroic rescuers were plaintiffs who presented themselves as protecting women and children from violence. Capable victims often held professional positions of power, such as police officers and security guards, which they tried to leverage in the courtroom to balance victimhood and masculinity—with varying success. Fearful men were observed among both plaintiffs and defendants, and they performed victimhood in line with the traditional expectations of victimhood, through emotions such as fear, distress, and weakness. These themes show that the script associated with the victim-role is not exclusive to plaintiffs. Instead, it is fluid: sought after, avoided, or opposed as part of multiple masculinity performances in the courtroom.

Politicians are increasingly describing immigrants as dangerous and threatening criminals. The criminal immigrant, i.e., 'crimmigrant' has become a useful symbol, especially for the emerging radical-right parties in the Nordic countries. This article fuses crimmigration research with studies of political debates, to explore the current parliamentary debate on crimmigrants in Sweden. It looks at how, when, and why politicians link immigrants to crime, and strangers to danger. The empirical analysis identifies five narrative characters that are discussed in the Swedish political debate on immigrants and crime. The study shows that even firm stereotypes such as the crimmigrant have nuances. It highlights how and when radical-right and mainstream parties contribute to the crimmigrant stereotype, or dispute it. It shows how certain narrative characters are used in politics, and how politicians link immigrants to crime, and strangers to danger.

Sex trafficking has become established as one of the most significant (crime) problems in the Western world. This article provides a greater understanding of how the work of certain actors, that is claims-makers, established sex trafficking as a prominent problem on the political and media agendas in Sweden during the 2000s. It can help us understand how certain crimes can achieve the position of social problems. The study analyses political texts and debates, newspaper articles and reports published by the Swedish police. The sex-trafficking discourses that were particularly dominant in the material were: ‘The ideal sex slave Lilya’ (referring to the film Lilya 4-ever), ‘The foreign threat from the East’ and ‘Hidden but well-established organized crime’. By defining sex trafficking as an important problem, with the aid of these three discourses, a large number of claims-makers were given the opportunity to emphasize threatening and racialized discourses about ‘sex slaves’, immigration and organized crime. These discourses on sex trafficking create moral borders between innocence and guilt, between belonging and unbelonging, and between purity and danger.

Att odla kriminologi är en bok inspirerad av den forskningstradition om brott och utsatthet som Eva Tiby har planterat. Vi som har skrivit denna antologi har påverkats av de idéer Eva har odlat genom sin forskning och undervisning. Bokens 18 kapitel handlar därför om: hatbrott, viktimologi, kvinnor och brott, pedagogik, diskurser och konstruktioner.

Eva Tiby har främst varit verksam som forskare och professor vid Kriminologiska institutionen på Stockholms universitet. Där har hon introducerat och utvecklat forskningen och undervisningen om hatbrott och viktimologi. Tack vare Eva uppmärksammades dessa nya områden både akademiskt och politiskt i Sverige. Hon har också forskat om kvinnor och brott, samt analyserat olika konstruktioner av offer och gärningspersoner. Dessutom var Eva väldigt engagerad i undervisningen av studenter och hon utvecklade och använde pedagogiskt innovativa metoder. Eva har fått studenter och kollegor att växa.

Sex trafficking has been described as an enormous, serious and growing problem that must be combatted, but also as a moral panic based on a very small number of cases. This article explores the measures that have been proposed to combat sex trafficking by politicians, the national police and the National Council for Crime Prevention in Sweden between 2007 and 2017. The analysis shows that sex trafficking is partly used by the actors to justify their own work. The measures that all three actors describe as central are crime victim support, co-operation, information, education and expanded legislation. The underlying problems associated with sex trafficking, according to the three actors, appear to be prostitution, drug use and foreign women crossing Swedish borders. Much of the responsibility for the provision of information and education is delegated from government agencies to a wide range of actors. This desire for comprehensive societal engagement stands in stark contrast to the small number of sex trafficking cases in Sweden. The measures to combat sex trafficking are thus largely characterized by the hunt for an elusive crime.

In order to develop an improved understanding of the central criminological relationship between men and violence, this article focuses on men’s gender performances in relation to both violent victimization and offending. By means of discourse analysis based on interviews with male probationers about their own experiences of the victim–offender overlap, this research shows how men relate to a gangster discourse, a developmental discourse, a discourse of vulnerability and a fatherhood discourse. These discourses are characterized by complexity, interdiscursivity and ambivalence, and they rely to a varying extent on bodily performance and on several intersections. The study deepens our understanding of men’s relationship with violence and shows how men perform, renegotiate and even undo gender, within and beyond street cultures.

Crime levels in Sweden lie around the Western European average and are also on par with those of the United States, but the structure of crime differs. Despite stable, and even decreasing, crime rates during the twenty‐first century, reactions to crime and offenders have hardened. The number of prison inmates in Sweden is among the lowest in the world, and the sanctioning system is diversified, employing a range of different options.