Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
What are the most common sources of insecurity among prisoners? Almost all of the
prisoners said that the decrease in freedom, that people cannot decide about their own life, is a
source of insecurity. In addition many things related to "environmental insecurity" - such as
contamination of the nature, destruction of life, ozone depletion and the Greenhouse Effect -
were among the ten most common causes of insecurity. These things were realtively highly
rated among the civilian men too. There were also some social problems; peoples' disregard
and violent crimes, as well as the reduction of social and health services, cutting unemployment
benefits and amount of expences, that were very common sources of insecurity among
prisoners. For example, in all, 57% of prisoners had been unemployed before being sent to
prison. Infact all of the ten factors mentioned here caused more, and most of them much more,
insecurity to the prisoners than to the civilians. The biggest differences were in the following
factors: "bureaucracy", "amount of expences" and "people cannot decide about their own
life". Do these differences tell us something about the differences in the living conditions
and/or in the ways of living among these two groups of people?
Table 1. The ten most common causes of insecurity among the prisoners as compared with
the figures among the civilian men (%)
___________________________________________________________________________
Male prisoners Civilian men
(N=259) (N=2019)
[causes me great insecurity]
Causes of insecurity:
__________________________________________________________________________
1. People cannot decide about their own life 93 [65] 54
2. Contamination of nature 93 [54] 82
3. Destruction of life 91 [60] 70
4. Peoples' disregard for one and another 85 [47] 63
5. Bureaucracy 83 [54] 34
6. Violent crimes 83 [49] 62
7. Reduction of social and health services 83 [42] 60
8. Ozone depletion and the Greenhouse
Effect 83 [41] 55
9. Amount of expences 81 [48] 39
10. Cuts in unemployment benefits 80 [51] 58
___________________________________________________________________________
In all there were 65 factors which caused insecurity for at least every second prisoner, and 22
factors that caused insecurity for at least three out of four prisoners. Nineteen factors of these
65 caused inseurity especially for at least 50% of the civilian, 18-54-year-old men, who took
part into the population research project (N=2 019). There were only 24 things that caused
insecurity for at least every second person of the civilian sample - both men and women - who
took part into the population research project in 1991-1995 (N=6 784; see Niemelä & co.
1997, 79). There were only two things among these 65 that caused more insecurity for the
civilians than for the prisoners: "unemployment or losing one's job", which caused insecurity
for 70% of civilian men; and "the situation in the former Soviet Union", which caused
insecurity for 75% of civilian men. Among the prisoners the corresponding figures were 58%
and 66%.
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