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

NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
Table 2. Location of crime
Place of crime
Victims home
Offenders home
Hotel
Public place
Violent
offences
13
5
0
4
%
30
12
0
9
Sexual offences
against adults
13
12
4
%
35
32
11
Child abuse
Outdoors
21 49
6
16 3 12
Total 43 100% 37 100% 25 100%
Most of the sexual crimes against adults and the child abuse cases took place in the victims or
offenders home, this is a different pattern tothat seen with violent crimes in Iceland, where
most of the violent offences took place outdoors.
Discussion
Similarities in crime types
When we look at the information as a whole we can see that different crime patterns emerge
depending on the type of crime that has been committed. Most violent crimes take place at
weekends during the night, the offenders have usually been drinking before the crime took
place. The offender and victim in these cases seldom know each other well. A similar pattern
arises with regards to sexual crimes that are committed against adults. The offender is more
often than not drunk whilst engaging in the criminal offence and it usually takes place at
night. In over half the sexual crime cases the offender and the victim do not know each other
personally. There is however a difference in the location of the crime, most sexual crimes
(both against adults and children) take place either in the victims or the offenders home.
When we look at the information gathered on child abuse the criminal pattern changes
somewhat. The offender and the victim usually know each other quite well and the offender
is in most cases sober when the criminal act takes place. There seems to be quite a large
difference between those offenders who commit violent or sexual crimes against adults and
those who commit sexual offences against children. This is a point that we think has not been
emphasised enough when crime prevention is being discussed.
Differences in crime types
Often when people talk about crime prevention they speak as though the same method will
prevent all types of crime. From our research results we conclude that different prevention
methods needs to be employed according to the type of crime that is to be prevented.
Preventing crime is not an easy task but the work has to start somewhere, thus we have come
up with a number of ideas that we believe justify further investigation, it should be made clear
that these are only suggestions and that they have not been tested in any manner.
2
6
8
13
1
0
%
32
52
4
0
201