An Overview of Criminological Research on Violence in Slovenia

This paper presents a survey of Slovene criminological research on violence since Slovenia's independence in 1991. The authors reviewed all research projects conducted at the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana and the College of Police and Security Studies (now Faculty of Criminal Justice, University of Maribor) and other academic institutions in Slovenia. This paper shows the prevailing studied forms of violence in contemporary Slovenian society and research methods used to reveal the dimensions and the extent of all kinds of violence.     

Fear of crime in two post-socialist capital cities - Ljubljana, Slovenia and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Theorizing about the fear of crime is one of the main activities of contemporary research in the field of international criminology. The research on variations in fear levels has been dominated by sociological, socio-demographic variables, and social-psychological models of fear of crime. This article uses multiple regression techniques in order to examine these variables to compare fear of crime in two central European capitals: Ljubljana, Slovenia and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo was found to be more fearful overall than Ljubljana. This difference may be explained by differences in the roles of the two cultures in the war of the former Yugoslavia. The current article focuses on differences in culture (e.g., status of women and self-estimation) as well as post-war conditions such as economics, social deprivation, and disorganization in order to explain differing levels of fear of crime.     

Penal and Prison Policy on the “Sunny Side of the Alps”: The Swan Song of Slovenian Exceptionalism?

The article considers penal and prison policy in Slovenia by illustrating and confronting the roots, development and main features of Slovenian vis-à-vis Scandinavian penal “exceptionalism”. It first explores economic, social and political developments that made both Scandinavian and Slovenian penal regimes, in terms of stability and leniency of penal policy, low imprisonment rates and quality of prisoner treatment, to some degree exceptional if confronted with regimes of the vast majority of western countries. Further, the authors explore what consequences and implications the recent punitive tendencies have for Slovenian exceptionalism and whether they jeopardize or perhaps even threaten mild penal order, which the country on the “sunny side of the Alps” has been building since the 1970s. Finally, the authors try to find out whether, in spite of the declining welfarism and rising punitiveness, Slovenian-style penal exceptionalism has a chance to revive and endure.     

Environmental crime and green criminology in South Eastern Europe—practice and research

All contemporary societies are facing environmental crime as one among many modern threats to the environment and human / animal life and this is due to the unlimited exploitation of natural resources and pollution. The aim of the present paper is to describe different responses to environmental crime and the development of green criminology in South Eastern Europe. In this region environmental crime occurs under the influence of social conditions and circumstances in which the environment is used as a source of resources for survival, as well as economic factors which mean the environment is used as a resource for profit. For countries in South Eastern Europe it is typical that environmental criminals change their modus operandi and adapt to new socio-economic circumstances, use different loopholes in legislation and exploit gaps in infrastructure and enforcement leading to committing environmental offences without being processed and punished. In many countries of South Eastern Europe green criminology is still in its nascent stages but is focusing on similar obstacles and challenges to those identified elsewhere, such as multi-disciplinarity, cooperation with the natural sciences, and responding to particularities in the region, such as pollution of marine and coastal ecosystems, hunting tourism, and organized crimes such as timber logging.     

Viability of Human Articular Chondrocytes Harvested Postmortem: Changes with Time and Temperature of In Vitro Culture Conditions

Different studies of long‐term chondrocytes viability have shown a gradual reduction as a function of time and ambient temperature. The aim of our in vitro study was to establish chondrocyte postmortem viability curves for 4°C, 11°C, 23°C, 35°C during 63 days after the donors' death. Osteochondral cylinders were procured from the knees of 16 male donors (20–47 years), stored in preservation media that was not changed, and analyzed in 3‐day intervals using a confocal laser scanning microscope. A significant influence of time on viability was found from Day 9 (p = 0.0029) and onwards (p < 0.0001). The lowest overall chondrocyte viability was at 35°C, followed by 4°C (p < 0.0001). The conditions used in this in vitro analysis suggest that similar viabilities may occur while in situ in the decedent. Further studies of chondrocyte viability from individuals with known postmortem intervals may show premise to help evaluate time since death in the late postmortem interval.     

Compliance with the Law in Slovenia: The Role of Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy

The empirical status of Tom Tyler’s (1990) process-based model of regulation is frustrated by the fact that most studies are conducted in the US, leaving open the question of whether similar effects can be observed in countries with different historical and political contexts. The current study tests two process-based model hypotheses using cross-sectional survey data from 683 young adults in Slovenia. The results reveal: (1) procedural justice judgments significantly shape individual perceptions of police legitimacy, and (2) perceived police legitimacy explains self-reported compliance with the law. Though slightly diminished in magnitude, the legitimacy effect persists when using an instrumental variable to address possible endogeneity bias and after statistically controlling for known correlates of law violating behavior (i.e., personal morality and low self-control). The findings also show that the legitimacy effect on compliance with different laws (e.g., littering and buying stolen property) varies depending on the operationalization of legitimacy (i.e., additive scale versus instrumental variable). While the findings indicate that the process-based model of regulation is germane to post-socialist countries such as Slovenia, more research focusing on the explanatory breadth of the model is necessary.