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

NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
As could be expected most of the violent and sexual crimes took place during the night,
between 1 • 8 am. It is not evident however from figure 2 that most of these crimes took
place on Friday or Saturday night.
The relationship between the offender and victim, with regards to whether they knew each
other before the crime was committed can be seen in table 1.
Table 1. The relationship between victims and offenders.
Offender
Spouse
Relative
Friend
Step-parent
Acquaintance
Stranger
Unknown
Total
200
Violent Offences
N (%) N
5
0
1
0
14
20
3
43
12
0
2
0
33
46
7
100%
Sexual Offences against
Adults
4
4
2
1
15
9
2
37
(%)
11
11
5
3
40
24
6
100%
Child Abuse
N
0
7
3
7
6
3
0
26
(%)
0
27
12
27
23
11
0
100%
Almost 80% of all violent crimes in this study were committed by strangers or acquaintances.
The term acquaintance in this study was used to indicate a situation where the victim and the
offender knew of each other rather than actually knew each other. This proves to be
complicated in a small society such as Iceland as people are likely to recognise a number of
persons without having any personal contact with them. This should be kept in mind when
considering the percentage of sexual crimes committed against adults. About 40% of the
sexual crimes were committed by acquaintances. In 25% of the sexual crime cases the victim
knew their offender personally. In the child abuse cases the offence was usually committed
by a person that the child knew well, as might be expected. This is probably because to
commit a sexual crime against a child the offender in most cases needs to gain its trust. The
fact that many child offenders commit more than once offence against a single victim makes
this point clear.
In table 2 it can be seen where most of the crimes took place.