Preventive Policing and Security Plans: The Reception of New Crime Prevention Strategies in Three Finnish Cities

In Western countries today, security is seen predominantly as a problem of public places. This has given rise to a growing demand for new strategies of governing public places, the most popular of which are crime prevention, community policing (e.g., zero tolerance) and partnership. Their aim is to encourage the public sector, voluntary organizations and market actors to work more closely with the police in a local effort to create and maintain a safe living environment. This article looks at what kind of reception the new methods of governing public places have received in three Finnish cities (Helsinki, Lappeenranta, and Tampere) by reviewing their newly formulated security plans and programmes. The analysis of this document material makes use of the concept of moral regulation. The analysis focuses on the kind of local security problems that are identified in these security plans as targets of moral regulation; what kinds of techniques they propose for addressing and resolving these problems; and in what kind of crime prevention role they position the subjects of moral regulation (police officers and police partners) and the objects of moral regulation. The analysis shows that Helsinki aims to regulate the problems occurring in public places by emphasizing a neo­liberal ethos. Lappeenranta, on the other hand, walks a tight­rope in its security plan between communitarian and welfare state ambitions. Tampere, for its part, responds to the security threat in public places by adopting a neo­leftist stance (cf. the Third Way).     

‘Yes,but all responsible Finns want to stop living on credit’: Feeling rules in the Finnish politics of austerity

In 2015, the newly elected government of Finland introduced austerity measures designed to improve the public economy, which had not recovered from the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The article examines how the government sought to secure acceptance for austerity by appealing to citizens’ emotions. We analyse how the measures were emotionally motivated and how, according to the parties in power, citizens should and should not have felt about them. The article shows how the politics of austerity produces various and contradictory feeling rules. These seek to temper citizens’ negative emotions towards austerity, such as dissatisfaction over unfair sharing of pain and distrust towards political authority. Interestingly, the rules evoke hope that a better future lies ahead if citizens follow the proposed measures, yet prompt fears of what will happen if they do not. The government also emphasised its transparency and honesty to prompt empathy and trust from the population.     

Reactions of Boys and Girls to Sexual Abuse and to Sexual Encounters with Peers

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - To understand the etiology and consequences of child sexual abuse it is important to study the victims’ subjective reactions to such incidents. Because...     

Longitudinal Pathways from Cumulative Contextual Risk at Birth to School Functioning in Adolescence: Analysis of Mediation Effects and Gender Moderation

Children and adolescents exposed to multiple contextual risks are more likely to have academic difficulties and externalizing behavior problems than those who experience fewer risks. This study used data from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986 (a population-based study; N?=?6961; 51?% female) to investigate (a) the impact of cumulative contextual risk at birth on adolescents’ academic performance and misbehavior in school, (b) learning difficulties and/or externalizing behavior problems in childhood as intervening mechanisms in the association of cumulative contextual risk with functioning in adolescence, and (c) potential gender differences in the predictive associations of cumulative contextual risk at birth with functioning in childhood or adolescence. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis suggested that exposure to cumulative contextual risk at birth had negative associations with functioning 16 years later, and academic difficulties and externalizing behavior problems in childhood mediated some of the predictive relations. Gender, however, did not moderate any of the associations. Therefore, the findings of this study have implications for the prevention of learning and conduct problems in youth and future research on the impact of cumulative risk exposure.     

Expenditure Inflexibility in the State Budget: The Fiscal Policy Latitude of the Council of State in Finland

This paper deals with expenditure inflexibility, which has a crucial bearing on the fiscal latitude which the government has in the preparation of the Finnish state budget. The government’s fiscal latitude, i.e. the possibilities available to the government to increase, decrease or change state expenditures is restricted by vari‐ous mechanisms. The source material used in this study consists of budget documents and interviews with officials involved in preparing the budget; use was also made of earlier studies relating to this subject. Our major findings fall into three groups. (i) If the degree of inflexibility is used as a basis for classification, four classes of expenditure can be identified in the Finnish state budget: expenditure controlled by statute, expenditure controlled by agree‐ment, expenditure controlled by authorization and expenditure without formal con‐trol. (ii) In the budget for 1996, 92 per cent of expenditure was controlled in various ways, leaving only 8 per cent that was flexible. The conclusion can be drawn from this that without changing the mechanisms that bind expenditures, the govermment’s ability to alter fiscal policy in the budget of a single year is very limited. In the 1990s the proportion of statute‐controlled expenditures has decreased and the proportion of agreement‐controlled and authorization‐controlled expenditures has increased. Nevertheless fiscal latitude has grown. (iii) The material used for comparison showed that there is a similar problem in other countries, but that the mechanisms governing expenditure inflexibility and the fiscal latitude that governments may enjoy can vary.     

Crime is Part of the Problem: Contexts of Lethal Violence in Finland and the USA

According to Zimring & Hawkins, the exceptionally high level of homicide in the USA is unrelated to the nation's overall crime problem. In contrast to this statement, a critical review of their evidence suggests that criminal activity may explain a significant share of the excess levels of lethal violence in the USA. As a first step towards testing this hypothesis, we have created a uniform victim-level data file of information on the method and the situational context of homicide cases in Finland and the USA. In support of the hypothesis, we find that homicides that occur in the context of another crime are much more prevalent in the USA than in Finland. This difference accounts for 35% of the overall gap in the homicide rate between these two nations. Moreover, our research indicates that the effect of the criminal context cannot be reduced to the 'instrument effect', i.e. the fact that handguns are much more prevalent in the USA. In light of these findings, it would be premature, in terms both of theory and of public policy, to treat lethal violence as a problem entirely independent of other crime.     

Statistical Challenges in the Quantification of Gunshot Residue Evidence

The discharging of a gun results in the formation of extremely small particles known as gunshot residues (GSR). These may be deposited on the skin and clothing of the shooter, on other persons present, and on nearby items or surfaces. Several factors and their complex interactions affect the number of detectable GSR particles, which can deeply influence the conclusions drawn from likelihood ratios or posterior probabilities for prosecution hypotheses of interest. We present Bayesian network models for casework examples and demonstrate that probabilistic quantification of GSR evidence can be very sensitive to the assumptions concerning the model structure, prior probabilities, and the likelihood components. This finding has considerable implications for the use of statistical quantification of GSR evidence in the legal process.     

Procedural Justice and Identification with Virtual Teams: The Moderating Role of Face-to-Face Meetings and Geographical Dispersion

We investigated the previously unstudied relationship between procedural justice and identification within virtual teams, with a particular focus on how two features of virtual teams, namely frequency of face-to-face meetings and geographical dispersion, moderate that relationship. We argue that these two variables are sources of uncertainty, which in turn makes virtual team members more sensitive to perceptions of procedural fairness as essential cues in the identification process. In this study, we used cross-sectional survey methodology and data aggregated to the team level (N = 39). As predicted, our results showed that the link between procedural justice and identification was stronger when there were few face-to-face meetings and when teams were highly dispersed.     

Bayesian adaptive approach to estimating sample sizes for seizures of illicit drugs

A considerable amount of discussion can be found in the forensics literature about the issue of using statistical sampling to obtain for chemical analyses an appropriate subset of units from a police seizure suspected to contain illicit material. Use of the Bayesian paradigm has been suggested as the most suitable statistical approach to solving the question of how large a sample needs to be to ensure legally and practically acceptable purposes. Here, we introduce a hypergeometric sampling model combined with a specific prior distribution for the homogeneity of the seizure, where a parameter for the analyst's expectation of homogeneity (α) is included. Our results show how an adaptive approach to sampling can minimize the practical efforts needed in the laboratory analyses, as the model allows the scientist to decide sequentially how to proceed, while maintaining a sufficiently high confidence in the conclusions.     

The 1988 Presidential Election in Finland

The article aims to describe and analyse the 1988 presidential election in Finland. The parties and candidates in the election are presented and the electoral system is discussed. For the first time a double-vote system was used in which there are two ballots, one for the direct election of the president and one for the elector of the president. If a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, then that candidate is elected. If, however, no candidate receives 50 percent or more of the vote, then the electoral college elects the president. Although it was fairly certain that the incumbent president Mauno Koivisto would be re-elected, the campaign was a heated one, with the electorate very politically engaged. It is concluded that despite the fact regional differences between north and south Finland were aggravated—the candidate for the opposition, Paavo Väyrynen, received considerable support especially in northern Finland-the presidential election showed that the Finnish political system functions relatively smoothly and that its overall effect is highly legitimizing.