Eds.
Marc Coester and Erich Marks
with contributions from:
Cecilia Andersson, Nils Christie, Marc Coester, Caroline L. Davey, Noël Klima, Erich Marks, Christian Pfeiffer, Wiebke Steffen, Jan van Dijk, Belinda Wijckmans, Andrew B. Wootton
Forum Verlag Godesberg GmbH 2014
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
© Forum Verlag Godesberg GmbH,
Mönchengladbach.
All rights reserved.
Mönchengladbach 2014
Produced by: Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt
Print layout: Kathrin Geiß
Cover design: Konstantin Megas, Mönchengladbach
978-3-942865-29-6 (print)
978-3-942865-30-2 (ebook)
The German Congress on Crime Prevention is an annual event that takes place since 1995 in different German cities and targets all areas of crime prevention: Administration, the health system, youth welfare, the judiciary, churches, local authorities, the media, politics, the police, crime prevention committees, projects, schools, organizations, associations and science. The desired effect is to present and strengthen crime prevention within a broad societal framework. Thus it contributes to crime reduction as well as to the prevention and the reduced risk of becoming a victim as well as fear of crime. The main objectives of the congress are:
Since its foundation the German Congress on Crime Prevention has been opened to an international audience with a growing number of non-German speaking participants joining. Because prevention is more than a national concern and should be focused internationally this step seemed crucial. Bringing together not only German scientists and practitioners but also international experts in crime prevention and therefore developing a transnational forum to foster the exchange of knowledge and experience constitutes the main focus of this approach. To give the international guests a discussion forum, the Annual International Forum within the German Congress on Crime Prevention was established in 2007. For non-German guests this event offers lectures in English language as well as other activities within the German Congress on Crime Prevention that are translated simultaneously. International guests are able to play an active role by presenting poster or displaying information within the exhibition.
Over the next few years we intend to develop this concept further. It is our wish to build an international forum for crime prevention that ensures a competent exchange of ideas, theories and applied approaches.
This sixth edition of “International Perspectives of Crime Prevention” includes the outcomes of the 7th Annual International Forum which took place within the 18th German Congress on Crime Prevention on the 22th and 23th of April 2013 in Bielefeld and gathered together more than 3000 people from the field of crime prevention in Germany and worldwide.
All articles in this book reflect worldwide views on crime prevention as well as the current status, discussion and research in crime prevention from different countries.
We hope to find a broad audience, interested in the upcoming events of the Annual International Forum as well as the German Congress on Crime Prevention. For more information please visit our website at http://www.gcocp.org.
Marc Coester and Erich Marks
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the 18th German Congress on Crime Prevention. Europe’s biggest annual crime prevention congress is being held in Bielefeld this year and I’d like to assure those of you who are joining us via live video link that, despite the conspiracy reports that would have us believe otherwise, 1 Bielefeld really does exist. In fact there’s a standing joke among the 2,000 plus crime prevention experts assembled here today: “If we never meet again in this world, we’ll meet again in Bielefeld.”
As in previous years, I’d like to give a particularly warm welcome to our many guests of honour, among them crime prevention practitioners and researchers, high-ranking representatives from government and civil society, members of the media, and visitors from overseas. It delights me to see a further increase in attendance by legislative, executive, judicative and civil society decision-makers.
Please allow me to name just a few names from our large group of special guests, our prominent participants from Germany and further afield, members of parliament, holders of public office, heads of authorities, presidents, directors, chairpersons and high-ranking representatives of numerous organisations and institutions:
Cecilia Andersson, Safer Cities Programme, UN-HABITAT Kenya
Heike Bartesch, Director, German Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ)
Prof. Dr. Andreas Beelmann, Head of the Department for Research Synthesis, Intervention and Evaluation at the University of Jena
Michael Bischoff, Departmental Head, Office of the Public Prosecutor in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Dr. Wilfried Blume-Beyerle, City of Munich Administration
Matthi Bolte MdL, Member for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in the North Rhine-Westphalia State Parliament
Prof. Dr. Nils Christie, University of Oslo, Norway
Pit Clausen, Lord Mayor of Bielefeld
Prof. Jochen Dieckmann, Chair of the North Rhine-Westphalia Crime Prevention Council
Thomas Dittmann, Ministerial Director, German Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ)
Günther Ebenschweiger, President of the Austrian Centre for Crime Prevention
Hans Feuß MdL, Member of the SPD in the North Rhine-Westphalia State Parliament
Wolfgang Gatzke, Director of the North Rhine-Westphalia Police Force
Angelika Gemkow, North Rhine-Westphalia Disabilities Commissioner
Dr. Katharina Giere, Bielefeld Police President
Jens Gnisa, Director, Bielefeld District Court
Prof. Dr. Christian Grafl, University of Vienna and Representative of the German
Congress on Crime Prevention in Austria
Prof. Dr. Wolf Hamann, Baden-Württemberg Police President, Chair of the German
Police Crime Prevention Programme (ProPK)
Prof. Dr. Sangkyou Han, Kangwon National University, South Korea
Dagmar Hanses MdL, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Speaker, North Rhine-Westphalia Parliamentary Legal Committee
Frank Herrmann MdL (Piraten), Piraten Party Speaker, North Rhine-Westphalia Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs
Frank Hofmann MdB (SPD), Deputy Chair North Rhine-Westphalia Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs
Inge Howe MdL (SPD), Deputy Chair North Rhine-Westphalia Parliamentary Petitions Committee
Prof. Dr. Theresia Höynck, Chair of the German Juvenile Court Association (DVJJ)
Ralf Jäger, North Rhine-Westphalia Minister for Municipal and Home Affairs
Elizabeth Johnston, Secretary General of the European Forum for Urban Security (EFUS), Paris
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Kerner, Chair of the German Foundation for Crime Prevention (DVS)
Ralph Klom, Attorney General Bielefeld
Regina Kopp-Herr MdL, SPD Member of Parliament of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Kirstin Korte MdL, CDU Member of Parliament of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Prof. Dr. Michael Kubink, Director North Rhine-Westphalia Crime Prevention Council
Thomas Kutschaty, North Rhine-Westphalia Minister of Justice
Thomas Lenz, Mecklenburg West-Pomerania State Secretary for Home Affairs and Sport
Marc Lürbke MdL (FDP), Parliamentary Speaker for the North Rhine-Westphalia Sports Committee
Gisela Mayer, Chair Aktionsbündnis Amoklauf Winnenden
Roswitha Müller-Piepenkötter, National Chair Weisser Ring
Jürgen Mutz, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the German Foundation for Crime Prevention (DVS)
Ralf Nettelstroth MdL, CDU Member of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Parliament
Prof. Gerd Neubeck, Head of Group Security at Deutsche Bahn and Chair of the Executive Board of the German Forum for Crime Prevention (DFK)
Richard Oetker, Chair of the Weisser Ring Foundation
Daniel Hark-Mo Park, Delegation Head, Korean Institute of Criminology
Prof. Dr. Christian Pfeiffer, Director, Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN)
Norbert Pieper, Senior Expert, Deutsche Post AG
Boris Pistorius, Lower Saxony Minister for Home Affairs and Sport, Chair of the Standing Conference of the Ministers and Senators of the Interior of the Federal Länder (IMK)
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Pott, Director, Federal Centre for Health Education (BzgA)
Peter Reckling, National Director, Federal Association for Social Work, Penal Law and Criminal Policy (DBH)
Sebastian Rode, Professional Footballer and Ambassador of the Hesse Crime Prevention Council
Dr. Martin Schairer, Chair of the German-European Forum for Urban Security (DEFUS)
Wilhelm Schmidt, President of the German Association for Public and Private Welfare (DV)
Jürgen Schubert, Vice President Federal German Police
Günter Schwieren, President, Bielefeld District Court
Prof. Dr. Hans-Dieter Schwind, Council President, German Foundation for Crime
Prevention (DVS)
Dr. Tina Silbernagl, Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Dr. Wiebke Steffen, German Congress on Crime Prevention (DPT)
Klaus Stüllenberg, Chair, Foundation for Crime Prevention
Willem van der Brugge, Secretary General of the CEP, Utrecht
Prof. Dr. Dr. Jan van Dijk, University of Tilburg
Bernd Wesemeyer, Vice President, Detmold District Administration
Hartfrid Wolff MdB, Chair of the FDP Parliamentary Group’s Working Group on
Home Affairs and Law
Jörg Ziercke, President of the Federal German Policy (BKA), Deputy National Chair, Weisser Ring
I would also like to welcome and thank all those involved in organising and managing this 18th German Crime Prevention Congress, be they speakers, organisers, moderators or the numerous accredited journalists.
The 18th German Crime Prevention Congress comprises four main parts and several sub-parts which, as usual, are described on the Congress website and in the Congress catalogue together with several abstracts:
The Congress Patron, Minister President Hannelore Kraft, fittingly summed things up in her welcome address when she said: “Preventing crime from happening is the best form of victim protection. It thus plays an important role in securing social cohesion.”
The scope of the highly impressive presentations on this focus topic is deliberately broad, ranging from the personal experience of a kidnapping victim (Richard Oetker), current trends in victimology (Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Kerner) and victim research (Prof. Dr. Jan van Dijk), and victim support strategies in schools (Dr. Christian Böhm) to the pending launch of a national hotline in Germany (Dr. Gesa Schirmacher) and EU-level victim support systems/services (Dr. Helgard van Hüllen). Right-wing issues are addressed by Prof. Dr. Bernd-Dieter Meier (Wiedergutmachungsstrafe – ein notwendiges Element des Sanktionssystems (Make-Good Punishments: A Necessary Component of the Sanctioning System)), by Dr. Wolfram Schädler („Nicht noch einmal? Der Schutz von Opfern vor dem Täter durch den Strafprozess – höchstens Zufall“ (Not again? Safeguarding Victims from Perpetrators during Criminal Proceedings: Coincidental at most)) and Prof. Dr. Michael Walter und Claudia Gelber (Wege zu einer opferbezogenen Vollzugsgestaltung (Towards Victim-Focused Prisons)). Approaches for restorative justice are well-represented, with presentations by Professor Dr. Nils Christie (Restoring Societies. Norway after the atrocities.), Dr. Michael Kilchling (Neue Impulse in Deutschland und Europa (New Ideas in Germany and Other European Countries), Dr. Beate Ehret (Friedenszirkel. Eine nachhaltige Methode der außergerichtlichen Konfliktschlichtung im Rahmen der Restorative Justice (Peace Circle. A sustainable methodology for out-of-court conflict resolution by means of restorative justice)) and a workshop on the topic of Restorative Circles – Konflikte austragen und in soziale Impulse verwandeln (Restorative Circles: Transforming Conflict into Social Stimulation). Other parts of the Congress such as the exhibition, the educational theatre performances, the films and the poster session, also take up the focal topic of Congress. Building on the parallel justice2 approach developed by Susan Herman in the U.S., Professor Dr. Christian Pfeiffer closed the Congress with a presentation in which he justified The Need for Greater Legal and Social Support for Victims of Crime (Warum brauchen wir eine Stärkung des Opfers in Recht und Gesellschaft?).
When looked at overall, it is hoped that the Congress will contribute to long-overdue intensification of victim research and victim support research, and supply new impetus for the focal topic of ‘more prevention, fewer victims’. Finally, with the new focus on parallel justice, it is hoped that equally as much attention will be given to the increasing interests, needs and wants of the victims of crime as to the penal needs of the state and of civil society, and also to the provision of targeted crime prevention offerings in the tertiary sector.
Since its launch in 1997, the Centre for the Prevention of Youth Crime (DJI) has informed practitioners, policy-makers, the media and the research community about models and strategies for the prevention of juvenile crime. “The crime prevention approaches used in child and youth welfare, in schools, and by the police and the justice sector are compared for their prerequisites and conditions for success, their target groups and objectives and – where possible – evaluated for their achievements. The aim is to further the specialist debate and improve specialist practice. The DJI sees childhood and juvenile delinquency as an educational responsibility, not only towards children and youths, but towards other responsible institutions such as schools, the police and the justice sector.3
At a special event held on the occasion of the 18th German Congress on Crime Prevention, the DJI in its capacity as a Congress partner presented the seventh sub-topic in a kind of status report following 15 years of research work: Dr. Christian Lüders: Prävention von Delinquenz im Kindes- und Jugendalter – über die Bedeutung der pädagogischen Orientierung (Preventing Delinquency in Childhood and Youth: The Role of Education); Bernd Holthusen and Dr. Sabrina Hoops: Die Kinder- und Jugendhilfe – zentraler Akteur und Kooperationspartner in der Prävention von Delinquenz (Child and Youth Welfare: Key Actors and Cooperation Partners in Deliquency Prevention); Professor Dr. Thomas Feltes: Polizei und junge Menschen – mehr präventive Repression? (The Police and Young People: More Prevention Repression?), Professor. Dr. Theresia Höynck: Jugendkriminalrecht – die Umsetzung des Erziehungsgedankens als zentrale Herausforderung (Juvenile Crime: The Challenge in Fostering Education as the Answer), Professor Dr. Wolfgang Melzer: Kriminalitätsprävention an Schulen – zwischen Einzelprojekten und Schulentwicklung (Crime Prevention in Schools: Island Projects and School Development); Professor Dr. Karin Böllert, Jörg Freese and Regina Kraushaar: Podiums Discussion: The Role of Youth Policy in Preventing Juvenile Crime (Was kann Jugendpolitik für die Kriminalitätsprävention im Kindes- und Jugendalter leisten?), Dr. Michael Brünger: Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie – Perspektiven für den Ausbau der Kooperation (Child and Youth Psychiatry: Perspectives for Greater Cooperation).
Since the 12th German Congress on Crime Prevention in Wiesbaden back in 2007, criminologist Dr. Wiebke Steffen has written an annual Congress Report on the respective focal topics addressed at each subsequent congress. These reports provide the speakers, the participants and the interested specialist public with the basic facts and figures on the various topics covered and provide the basis for the annual crime prevention policy declaration made jointly by the Congress, its hosts and permanent event partners.
This year’s report by Dr. Steffen, the seventh in succession,4 bears the title Opferzuwendung in Gesellschaft, Wissenschaft, Gesetzgebung und Prävention: Stand, Probleme, Perspektiven (Victim orientation in society, research, criminal justice and crime prevention: Status, problems and perspectives). By way of advance information for the Congress speakers and participants, the report gives answers to the following questions: Do we have the right penal and social laws in place to do justice to both victims and perpetrators? Is the victim of a crime always helpless and without rights? Looking back, how have legal and social support for victims changed in the past twenty years? Are we really aware of victims’ needs and wants? Can crime prosecution really take account of them?
At the end of the 18th Congress, the Congress hosts and their permanent event partners will publish their joint Bielefeld Declaration based on the findings of the report.
Ever since the first congress back in 1995, it has been acknowledged that the annual congress is the product of excellent cooperation between many people and organisations. I should thus like to take this opportunity to thank the Congress partners, funders and sponsors, and their respective teams, for their help and support.
The 18th German Congress on Crime Prevention is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) and the German Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ). The Congress also has many partners:
Hosting partners
Permanent Congress Partners
Main sponsor
Cooperation partners and sponsors
Media partner
Further information and contact details for all Congress partners can be found on page nine of the Congress Catalogue and on the Congress website.
The 18th German Congress on Crime Prevention and the associated 7th Annual International Forum for Crime Prevention (AIF) attracted some 71 overseas experts from 23 countries.5
Presentations in English:
Presentations in German with international reference:
Information about the Congress is available on the following websites and via two iPhone Apps:
| German Congress on Crime Prevention | www.praeventionstag.de |
| Annual International Forum (English) | www.gcocp.org |
| DPT University/Academy | www.dpt-uni.de |
| Crime Prevention Search Portal | www.dpt-map.de |
| Daily Crime Prevention News | www.praeventionstag.de/news |
| www.facebook.com/praeventionstag | |
| https://twitter.com/praeventionstag | |
| Wikipedia | http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Präventionstag |
| DPT App in the App Store for iPhone and iPad Can be used to search the DPT archives on all presentations, speakers and exhibiting organisations from previous congresses | |
| TPN App in the App Store for iPhone and iPad (daily crime prevention news) Can be used to receive daily crime prevention news while ‘on the road’, including via push messaging | |
Scientific-empirical research has played an increasingly important role in (crime) prevention projects and programmes in the past twenty years. In that time, the German Congress on Crime Prevention has become one of the key forums for discourse between practitioners and researchers working in the broader field of crime prevention. To foster this trend in a systematic way, DPT launched the DPT Institute for Applied Crime Prevention Research (dpt-i) in 2013. Crime prevention research is seen as a multi-disciplinary approach which takes in the findings, methodologies and standards of a range of scientific disciplines and fields. The integrated basic sciences and the increasingly specialised and differentiated disciplines and fields include sociology, psychology, education, biology, medicine, political science, law, economics, ecology, criminology and victimology. These very varied and specific research fields come together in the process of profile-building in cross-discipline crime prevention research with a view to its specific research subject matter.
In line with the philosophy of the international Society for Prevention Research (SPR),6 the dpt-i sees prevention science as the scientific investigation of:
Prevention research aims to achieve its goals via integrated, multi-disciplinary cooperation and partnerships with prevention practitioners and the makers of prevention policy. The dpt-i sees its role as an active promoter of partnerships between the worlds of research, practice and policy-making. The DPT Institute for Applied Prevention Research sees its general responsibility primarily in:
The past decade has seen a largely positive trend in crime prevention, both nationally and internationally. At every level, from urban to global, numerous projects, programmes, strategies and recommendations have been drafted, approved and adopted. But despite all of this, there remain a number of issues which must still be addressed regarding communication, networking and cooperation.
Inter-disciplinary cooperation in prevention practice, prevention policy-making and prevention research remains under-developed. Thus, shared attention and multi-disciplinary cooperation efforts across the various disciplines in and levels of crime prevention must improve significantly in the coming years.
Awareness and use of available prevention knowledge leaves a lot to be desired. The findings of and experience gained in prevention practice and prevention research must be better communicated and made available to all free-of-charge in barrier-free online formats.
Leaving the trodden path of ‘more of the same’ and of ‘combating’ crime to embrace socially cohesive crime prevention is seen to have great potential at individual, social and policy level.8 The aim should thus be to place greater focus on parallel criminal justice law which takes in the increasingly recognised and acknowledged interests, needs and wants of the victims of crime to the same extent as it does the criminal justice needs of the state and society, as well as the resocialisation of those who commit punishable crimes.
The global problems currently faced call for a new, fundamental focus on prevention. New goals, priorities and strategies for (crime) prevention must be integrated into existing approaches. New risks and types of crime, and more structural forms of crime, must be debated earlier and perceived as far more serious than they have been to date.
At all levels, those responsible should lend greater support to the call for evidencebased strategies in crime prevention. When in doubt, it would make sense to adapt and align a tried, tested and evaluated programme, rather than developing something from scratch. Existing databases that give insights into evaluated prevention strategies must be better disseminated and better utilised.11
Numerous data analyses and research findings12 highlight the need to provide adequate resources and to redirect finances if crime prevention is to be made effective and pay over time.13
Finally, I should like to thank our speakers for the tremendous work that went into their impressive presentations, and for travelling some very long distances. I appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge and experience with us and with our broader audience via the Congress website. My thanks go to all who have actively participated in and supported the Congress. I’m sure we will all benefit from this interesting and informative event.
1See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_Conspiracy
2Susan Herman, Parallel Justice for Victims of Crime, New York 2012; see also www.paralleljustice.org
3http://www.dji.de/cgi-bin/projekte/output.php?projekt=150 (viewed 4 October 2013)
4All Congress reports are available for download on the Congress website: www.praeventionstag.de
5Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Cameroon, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Kenya, Luxembourg, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Zambia
6According to the SPR mission statement: “The Society for Prevention Research is an organization dedicated to advancing scientific investigation on the etiology and prevention of social, physical and mental health, and academic problems and on the translation of that information to promote health and well being. The multi-disciplinary membership of SPR is international and includes scientists, practitioners, advocates, administrators, and policy makers who value the conduct and dissemination of prevention science worldwide.“ www.preventionresearch.org/about-spr/mission-statement/, viewed January 25 2013
7For example: Those of the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), EFUS (European Forum for Urban Security), ICPC (International Centre for the Prevention of Crime), VPA (Violence Prevention Alliance der WHO), Beccaria-Standards (Lower Saxony Crime Prevention Council), UNHABITAT, EUCPN (European Crime Prevention Network), SPR (Society for Prevention Research), etc.
8See also Ronald Dworkin, Gerechtigkeit für Igel, Berlin 2012, and www.justiceforhedgehogs.net; Ronald Dworkin is one of the leading contemporary law theorists and holder, among other things, of the Bielefeld Science Award. In his latest work, he attempts to build a philosophical-historical theory which describes what constitutes success in life and explains the behavioural changes needed to life that kind of lifestyle.
9(1) Eradikate Extreme Poverty and Hunger (2) Achieve Universal Primary Education (3) Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women (4) Reduce Child Mortality (5) Improve Maternal Health (6) Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases (7) Ensure Environmental Sustainability (8) Global Partnership for Development; see: http://www.un-kampagne.de/index.php?id=1
10See Christina Schwägerl’s presentation at the 16th German Congress on Crime Prevention: http://www.praeventionstag.de/nano.cms/dokumentation/details/1687
11A number of (inter)national databases can be accessed online: www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints (Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence der University of Colorado Boulder); www.campbellcollaboration.org (Campbell Collaboration, Oslo); www.preventviolence.info(WHO Violence Prevention Alliance); www.gruene-liste-praevention.de (Lower Saxony State Prevention Council); www.eucpn.org (European Crime Prevention Network)
12See also DPT reports by W. Steffen since 2007 at www.praeventionstag.de and I. Waller: Mehr Recht und Ordnung! – oder doch lieber weniger Kriminalität? (More Law and Order? Or Simply Less Crime?) (2011)
13See also R. Wilkinson & K. Pickett: The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (2009) and www.equalitytrust.org,uk
In 1905 a young Dutch sociologist, Willem Bonger, defended his PhD thesis on the economic conditions of crime at the University of Amsterdam. He was shortly thereafter appointed as the first professor of criminology in The Netherlands. His thesis was translated into English and other languages and has become a classic in sociological criminology. In Bonger’s view criminologists should study not the personal pathologies of offenders but the societal causes of crime. He studied the macro determinants of crime by analyzing inter-country differences and trends in official criminal statistics. His work stands in the 19 century epidemiological tradition of Quetelet, Guerry, Von Mayr and Lacassagne. Bonger’s criminology was strongly policy-oriented. Criminology should, in his words ”before anything else show mankind the way how crime can be effectively combated and, most of all, prevented” (Bonger, 1932). He used to underline his preference for policy-oriented criminology with a quote from the French, positivist philosopher Auguste Comte: “Savoir pour prevoir et prevoir pour prevenir. Loosely translated as “Knowledge with the aim of prediction and prediction with the aim of preventing”. In other words, Bonger preached and practiced evidence-based crime prevention avant la lettre.
In his PhD thesis Bonger asserts that “the economic conditions of the common people exert a preponderant, even decisive impact on levels of crime“ (Bonger, 1905). He would stay faithful to this Marxist view of the root causes of crime throughout his professional life. Since he liked to express his convictions in strong, sometimes polemical statements, he might, had he lived in our days, have paraphrased the famous dictum of Bill Clinton in his electoral debate with Bush sr.: It’s the economy, stupid !
As key evidence for the predominant links between economic conditions and levels of crime Bonger submitted the correlation between changes in the price of a loaf of bread and in the numbers of people arrested for theft in the German state of Bavaria during the 19th century. When the bread prices went up, so did the numbers of people arrested. People were in Bonger’s view driven to crime by extreme poverty. Figure 1 shows these statistics, collected and analyzed by the German criminologist Von Mayr.
Figure 1 Parallelism between bread prices and arrested offenders in Bavaria (1835-1861)
source: W. Bonger (1905), Criminolité et conditions economiques, diss. University of Amsterdam
The remarkably strong correlations between the price of bread and the numbers of persons arrested for theft, begging and vagrancy suggest indeed a causal link between economic conditions and levels of crime. Bonger has referred to this analysis in many subsequent publications. It also received, together with the notorious cranial measurements of Cesare Lombroso, a prominent place in the opening chapter of a Dutch textbook on criminology (Van Dijk, Junger & Sagel-Grande, 2011/7th edition). During classes, students sometimes raise their hands and say: the parallelism is very impressive indeed but what happened after 1860? Does Von Mayrs law still hold? Did crime continue to track bread prices ever since? A pertinent question, indeed.
As convinced Marxist and social democrat, Willem Bonger held the firm belief that most forms of crime would automatically disappear as soon as a more just and egalitarian society was established. In one of his latest publications, just before the outbreak of World War II, he compared the numbers of persons convicted for various types of crime per 100.000 inhabitants of twenty European nations (Bonger, 1937). He proudly noted that the Netherlands showed a relatively low rate. Even lower rates were shown by Sweden, Denmark and England/Wales. For Bonger the favorable ranking of these nations confirmed once more the link between economic conditions and crime. Relatively affluent and egalitarian societies such as The Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries and England/Wales would in Bonger’s view of necessity enjoy relatively low levels of crime as a kind of bonus for their welfare policies.
The question that comes up is whether developments after World War II have born out Bonger’s criminological optimism. Are economic conditions and levels of crime still as closely linked as they apparently were in 19th century Bavaria? In other words, does the criminology of Bonger still provide a useful theoretical frame to understand, predict and prevent the crime problems of today? Or, to be more to the point: are trends in the level of crime of countries still tracking variations in “bread prices”? And specifically are the affluent, egalitarian Dutch still enjoying a relatively low level of crime?
When reflecting on these pertinent issues, the first consideration that comes to mind is that today’s criminologists no longer, as in Bonger’s time, use numbers of arrested or convicted persons as a measure of the extent of crime. Criminology has lost its methodological naivity. No serious criminologist beliefs in administrative statistics as reliable indicators of the levels of crime. Crime is nowadays preferably measured with sample surveys among the population with questions about victimization experiences or about self-reported offending. Unfortunately, these new, survey-based measures have only become widely available over the past two, or at most three, decades. To determine trends in crime since the end of WWII, there is no other option than to use the numbers of crimes recorded by the police as our default measure of crime.
Figure 2 shows the numbers of crimes recorded by the police per 100.000 inhabitants since 1950 in Sweden, Germany, The Netherland and Ireland.
Figure 2 Trends in police recorded crimes
source: Jan Van Dijk, Marianne Junger & Irene Sagel-Grande (2011), Actuele Criminologie, 7th edition, Den Haag: SDU
The first feature that catches the eye is that recorded crime has boomed in all four countries, most notably in Sweden. Between 1960 and 1990 levels of crime tripled or quadrupled. Analyses of police figures of recorded crime of the USA, France and most other Western nations show similarly steep upward trends over the same period (Gurr, 1977; Van Dijk, 1992).
Between 1960 and 1990 all Western countries experienced unprecedented booms in crime. During these three decades, known in France as the Trente Glorieuses (the Glorious Thirty), GDP per capita boomed. In addition, in most Western nations, and most notably so in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands, welfare states, as imagined by social democrats like Bonger, were actually put in place. During these years most Western nations not only became more affluent, but wealth was also distributed more equally across the population. During the Glorious Decades the Gini coefficients- the most commonly used measure of economic equality- dropped considerably across the Western world (Wilterdink, 1995)15.
The upward trends in volume crime between 1960 and 1990 in most Western nations cannot be easily reconciled with conventional criminological thinking about the root causes of crime in the tradition of Bonger. Post war trend data on crime fly squarely in the face of the Bongerian notion that crime is driven by poverty and economic inequality. Lagrange (2003) demonstrated for France, that wealth and levels of crime were not inversely related during this period in his country. Norstroem (1988) described Scandinavian crime booms as a side effect of economic prosperity. Using British indicators, criminologist Gloria Laycock made the same point in her inaugural lecture as director of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science in London (Laycock, 2001). The bulk of the British population was in many respects much better off in 1990 than probably ever before16.
To make sense of the prolonged post war crime booms some criminologists started to take a fresh look at the determinants of crime, thinking out of the (Marxist) box. In 1975 British criminologists Ron Clarke, Pat Mayhew and Mike Hough, at the time in-house researchers of the Home Office, published a report called Crime as Opportunity (Mayhew, Clarke, Sturman, & Hough, 1975). Crime, they argued, is driven by the extent of viable opportunities of crime in the here and now. Some years later, in 1979, American criminologist Marcus Felson ascribed the boom in volume crime in the USA to the increased availability of suitable targets for theft (such as cars and durable consumer goods) and a dispersal of activities away from family and home, eroding natural guardianship. In this equally seminal publication the term routine activity theory was first coined.
In a similar vein I myself surprised the audience of my inaugural lecture at Leiden University with the assertion that high levels of volume crime were the price to be paid for living in an affluent and modern society. A high level of crime such as that of The Netherlands, I commented tongue in cheek, should not necessarily be seen as a bad sign (Van Dijk, 1990). Some years later British economist Simon Field explained at a conference of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg that in the long run thefts and burglaries are linked to the stock of criminal opportunities, represented in his model by the sum of real consumers expenditures in the recent four years (Field, 1994). In other words, also economists now agreed: the more consumer goods- the more cheap bread around- the more crime. Criminal opportunity theory had arrived as an alternative theoretical frame.
The empirical evidence presented by Felson for the causal relationships between routine activities and crime was largely based on an analysis of data from the National Crime Victimization Surveys of the USA. This analysis confirmed the weakening of informal social control exercised by American families. My own ideas about how criminal opportunities shape the nature of crime were likewise grounded in analyses of results of victimization surveys, in this case the first rounds of the Dutch victimization surveys (Van Dijk & Steinmetz, 1980). Our analyses showed that numbers of vehicle theft were related to ownership and that criminal victimization at individual and macro level was related to the amount of time spent by citizens outside their homes. In the UK, the authors of Opportunity of Crime, just mentioned, would later become the main protagonists of the British Crime Survey. Results from the BCS would be used in numerous articles testing hypotheses derived from what had by then become known as situational crime prevention theory. The links between the launch of victimization surveys in the 1970s and 80s and the elaboration of various versions of criminal opportunity theory around that time are not coincidental. The same circle of criminologists was involved. And from a theoretical perspective these links seem almost self evident. The data on arrested and convicted persons used by criminologists of the generation of Bonger were by definition offender-oriented. In most European countries criminal statistics could be disaggregated according to offender characteristics such as age, gender, religion, profession or alcoholism (Bonger, 1937). Results of victimization surveys are by definition victim-centered. They give no information on the motivation of the offenders but a wealth of information on vulnerabilities of victims. Analyses of the new crime data show which groups of the population are most at risk to be criminally victimized, for example yuppies leaving their houses replete of consumer goods unattended most of the time. Victimization surveys have taught criminologists to look at the other side of crime. That’s how the empirical reality of criminal opportunity theory came into their sight.