Suchergebnisse

Yksi kriminologian keskeisistä havainnoista viime vuosikymmeninä on ollut useiden perinteisten rikoslajien määrän melko systemaattinen väheneminen. Tutkimuskirjallisuudessa puhutaankin niin sanotusta "crime drop" -ilmiöstä. Samaa kehitystä on havaittu myös suomalaisessa nuorisorikollisuudessa. Aiemman suomalaisen tutkimuksen mukaan nuoret tekevät ja kokevat historiallisen vähän rikoksia. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastelemme Kriminologian ja oikeuspolitiikan instituutin keräämien Nuorisorikollisuuskyselyiden avulla nuorten varkauksien, väkivaltarikosten ja kannabiksen käytön muutoksia aikavälillä 1995–2020. Esitämme seuraavat tutkimuskysymykset: 1) Miten nuorten rikoskäyttäytymisen esiintyvyys on kehittynyt vuosien 1995 ja 2020 välillä? 2) Miten rikoksia tekevien nuorten tekomäärät ovat kehittyneet vuosien 1995 ja 2020 välillä? Tulosten mukaan varkaus- ja väkivaltarikoksiin syyllistyvien nuorten määrä (esiintyvyys) on laskenut seurantajakson aikana, kun taas kannabista käyttävien nuorten osuus on hieman noussut. Vuosien 2016 ja 2020 välillä rikoskäyttäytymisessä ei ole enää tapahtunut merkitsevää muutosta. Yleisestä esiintyvyyden laskusta huolimatta, rikoksia tekevien nuorten tekomäärät eivät ole laskeneet aikavälillä 1995–2020. Väkivaltarikosten ja kannabiksen käytön kohdalla kaikkein rikosaktiivisimpien nuorten rikosmäärät ovat lisääntyneet seurantajakson aikana. Viime vuosikymmenien aikana rikoksia tekevien nuorten määrä on siis kehittynyt myönteisesti. Sen sijaan etenkin paljon rikoksia tekevien nuorten ryhmä näyttäisi vaativan erityisesti kohdennettuja toimia, jotta vastaavaa kehitystä nähtäisiin myös tekomäärien osalta.

Markus Kaakinen and Matti Näsi: Prevalence of youth crime offending in Finland between 1995 and 2000.
The crime drop, a systematic decline in crime rates in most Western countries, has been one of the key findings in criminology in recent decades. This development has also been observed in Finnish juvenile delinquency. In this study, we use Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study surveys to analyze changes in youth theft, violent crime, and cannabis use between years 1995 and 2020. We ask the following research questions: 1) How has the prevalence of juvenile delinquency developed between 1995 and 2020? 2) How has the juvenile offenders' offending frequency developed between 1995 and 2020? The results show that the prevalence theft and violent crime has decreased during the follow-up period, while the proportion of young people using cannabis has increased slightly. Between 2016 and 2020, there has been no significant change in criminal behavior. Despite the general decline in prevalence, the offending frequency has not decreased between 1995 and 2020. In the case of violent crime and cannabis use, offending frequency has increased among the most criminally active juveniles. We conclude that even though the number of Finnish adolescents committing crimes has developed positively in recent decades the most active offenders likely require additional targeted policies and interventions.
Keywords: youth delinquency – crime drop – Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study – prevalence – offending frequency

Increasing social media use has transformed political participation by creating social cliques and echo chambers, which involve interaction between like‐minded people. This article examines the relationship between online political activity and personal involvement in online identity bubbles. This study is the first to examine this phenomenon using nationally representative data; its data were derived from surveys targeted at 18–74‐year‐old Finns (N = 3,724). Measures included online political activity, the Identity Bubble Reinforcement Scale, and behavioral and demographic factors. The results show that online political activity was positively associated with online identity bubbles. This effect was strong even after controlling for behavioral and demographic factors. In addition to online political activity, general online activity, online network size, and basic sociodemographic background variables explained variation of involvement in online identity bubbles. However, neither political preference nor political interest had a systematic effect on involvement in these bubbles. The findings confirm the theoretical assumption that online bubbles can be captured using subjective survey measures. Political activity appears to be a key factor associated with the strength of the online bubble experience. This finding has significance in the contemporary information society, in which various mundane discussions and cultural disputes become politically tinged.

Although online hate has become a phenomenon in online interaction, we do not know how the quality of online social relations is linked to the risk of being a target of hostile behavior online. In this article, we examine how cognitive social capital online (i.e., trust and sense of belonging) is associated with the risk of being a victim of online hate by utilizing cross‐national data collected in 2013–14 among American (n = 1,033), British (n = 999), German (n = 978), and Finnish (n = 555) adolescents and young adults (aged 15–30). We find online cognitive social capital to be associated with online hate victimization in all samples, even after controlling for social capital offline, size of offline and online social networks, social networking site activity, offline victimization experiences, age, and gender. The form of this relationship varied between our samples; in the American and German samples we found a linear relationship between online cognitive social capital and online hate victimization, whereas in the British and Finnish samples, we found a more complex association. However, in general, high cognitive social capital was related to a heightened risk of becoming a victim of online hate.

Social media enables information sharing and social interaction within organization. This research aims to analyze how both work- and nonwork-related communication with colleagues and the work community on social media is associated with work engagement among Finnish professionals. A total of five Finnish professional organizations ( N = 563) and a representative sample of the Finnish working population ( N = 1817) contributed to the survey data, which was analyzed with structural equation modeling. We found a direct positive association between work-related communication and work engagement among Finnish working population, and a positive indirect associations between both work- and nonwork-related communication and work engagement via organizational identification and social support. Findings suggest that communication in social media supports work engagement via organizational identification and social support. Organizations should pay more attention to social media communication practices and provide opportunities to build organizational identification and receive social support in social media.

Background: The outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has dramatically changed societies in 2020. Since the end of February, Europe has been hit particularly hard by COVID-19, but there are major country differences in both the spread of the virus and measures taken to stop the virus. Social psychological factors such as institutional trust could be important in understanding the development of the epidemic. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine country variations of COVID-19 mortality in Europe by analyzing social risk factors explaining the spread of the disease, restrictions and control measures, and institutional trust. Methods: The present study was based on a background analysis of European Social Survey data on 25 European countries (N=47,802). Multilevel mixed effects linear regression models focused on 84 days of the COVID-19 epidemic (January 22 to April 14, 2020) and modelled the daily COVID-19 mortality. Analysis focused on the impact of social relations, restrictions, and institutional trust within each country. Results: The spread of the COVID-19 epidemic has been fast everywhere, but the findings revealed significant differences between countries in COVID-19 mortality. Perceived sociability predicted higher COVID-19 mortality. Major differences between the 25 countries were found in reaction times to the crisis. Late reaction to the crisis predicted later mortality figures. Institutional trust was associated with lower COVID-19 mortality. Conclusions: The analyses demonstrated the importance of societal and social psychological factors in the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic. By considering multiple perspectives, this study showed that country differences in Europe are major, and this will have an impact on how countries will cope with the ongoing crisis in the following months. The results indicated the importance of timely restrictions and cooperation with people. © Atte Oksanen. ; Peer reviewed

Abstract. Background: The Internet has facilitated the existence of extreme and pathological communities that share information about ways to complete suicide or to deliberately harm or hurt oneself. This material is user-generated and easily accessible. Aims: The present study analyzed the buffering effect of social belonging to a primary group in the situation of pro-suicide site exposure. Method: Cross-national data were collected from the US, UK, Germany, and Finland in spring 2013 and 2014 from respondents aged 15–30 years (N = 3,567). Data were analyzed by using linear regression separately for women and men for each country. Results: A higher level of belonging to a primary group buffered the negative association of pro-suicide site exposure with mental health, measured as happiness, although the results were not consistent in the subgroups. US male subjects showed a significant buffering effect of the sense of belonging to family while the belonging to friends had a buffering effect among four other subgroups: British female and male subjects and Finnish female and male subjects. Conclusion: The results underline the positive potential of primary groups to shield young people's mental health in the situation of pro-suicide site exposure.

Cyberaggression is a harmful behavior, but cross-national studies on cyberaggression including relations among its individual and social predictors are limited. This study aimed to discover the direct and indirect relations among individual and social predictors of cyberaggression in socio-demographically balanced survey data set of 4816 15–25-year-old participants from Finland ( n = 1200, 50.0% female), South Korea ( n = 1192, 50.34% female), Spain ( n = 1212, 48.76% female), and the United States ( n = 1212, 50.17% female). Both, impulsivity and involvement in online cliques (i.e., identity bubbles) were related to more cyberaggression in the four countries. The relation between impulsivity and cyberaggression was partially mediated by compulsive Internet use in Finland, Spain, and the United States, but not in South Korea. The relation between identity bubble involvement and cyberaggression was mediated via compulsive Internet use only in the Spanish sample. Findings of this study can be used for policy and practice against cyberaggression.

AbstractAimsTo examine the continuing role of daily popular social media use in youth hazardous alcohol consumption in four countries across continents.MethodsA web-based survey was given to youths aged 15–25 in the USA (n = 1212), South Korea (n = 1192), Finland (n = 1200) and Spain (n = 1212). Hazardous alcohol use (alcohol use disorders identification test-C) was the dependent variable. Main independent variables measured daily use of different social media services. Controls included compulsive Internet use, offline belonging, psychological distress, impulsivity, risk-taking, age and gender. Linear regression models and mediation analyses with bootstrapping were done for each country.ResultsDaily use of Facebook and Instagram was associated with higher hazardous alcohol use among youths in Finland, South Korea and Spain. Daily instant messaging was related to higher hazardous alcohol use among South Korean and Finnish youths. Daily YouTube use was associated with higher hazardous alcohol use among youths in South Korea, but lower hazardous alcohol use among youths in the USA and Finland. Daily Twitter use was related to lower hazardous drinking among youths in Finland but higher hazardous drinking among youths in Spain. The mediation analyses revealed that uploading pictures to social media is a possible facilitator of social media-related hazardous alcohol use among youths in the USA and Spain.ConclusionCertain social media platforms might inspire and/or attract hazardously drinking youths, contributing to the growing opportunities for social media interventions.

Acts of terror lead to both a rise of an extended sense of fear that goes beyond the physical location of the attacks and to increased expressions of online hate. In this longitudinal study, we analyzed dynamics between the exposure to online hate and the fear of terrorism after the Paris attacks in November 13, 2015. We hypothesized that exposure to online hate is connected to a perceived Zeitgeist of fear (i.e., collective fear). In turn, the perceived Zeitgeist of fear is related to higher personal fear of terrorism both immediately after the attacks and a year later. Hypotheses were tested using path modeling and panel data (N = 2325) from Norway, Finland, Spain, France, and the United States a few weeks after the Paris attacks in November 2015 and again a year later in January 2017. With the exception of Norway, exposure to online hate had a positive association with the perceived Zeitgeist of fear in all our samples. The Zeitgeist of fear was correlated with higher personal fear of terrorism immediately after the attacks and one year later. We conclude that online hate content can contribute to the extended sense of fear after the terrorist attacks by skewing perceptions of social climate.