Expressive Crimes in Post-Socialist States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania1
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Expressive Crimes in Post-Socialist States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania1 VAˆ NIA CECCATO Department of Urban Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Abstract This article presents trends in availability and quality are dis- predict the variation of 2000’s expressive crimes in Estonia, cussed. While police official sta- expressive crime ratios than Latvia, and Lithuania from tistics show a significant rise in other indicators, such as land 1993 to 2000 and examines how rates of expressive crime in the use and economic covariates. demographic, socio-economic, Baltic countries during the 1990s Most of these covariates function land use, and institutional fac- (with the exception of homicide), in ways which are predicted by tors relate to their geography in victimization crime surveys indi- Western literature on crime geo- 2000. Geographical Information cate that there have been no graphy. System (GIS) and spatial regres- significant changes in crime sion models are employed in the levels and composition. Results key words: Assault, Crime geo- study, which make use of coun- also show that indicators of graphy, GIS, Homicide, Post- try regions as the unit of analy- regions’ social structure, such socialist countries, Regression sis. Issues concerning crime data as divorce rate, more strongly models, Trends, Vandalism Introduction in these states during this period, or the The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and changes that have taken place, and why Lithuania have experienced striking but (but see, for example, Butler 1992; not identical increases in the number of Aromaa 1998; Lehti 1998; Van Duyne reported offences during the last decade 2001; Rawlinson 2001; Ahven 2004). (Nordic Criminal Statistics 2003; These three Baltic countries represent Interpol 2003). The highest increase interesting case studies for scientific and was reported in Estonia, where the rate policy-related research into the geogra- increased from 245 reported offences per phy of crime (Fig 1). First, since the 10,000 inhabitants in 1993 to 421 in collapse of the Soviet Union, these states 2000, followed by Lithuania, where it have undergone a period of profound rose from 162 to 235 reported offences, political, economic, and social change. and Latvia, where it rose from 155 to These changes are expected to have 209 reported offences (Appendix 1). implications for the level and composi- However, relatively little is known about tion of offences as well as their geogra- the composition and geography of crime phies. Second, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have recently joined the EU. 1This paper is part of the project ‘States in transition Historically they have been transit coun- and their geography of crime’, financed by The Bank of tries between East and West (Ulrich Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, grant J2004-0142:1). A preliminary 1994); however, now they have become version of this article was presented in the 6th Annual border states on the critical eastern Conference of the European Society of Criminology, Tubingen, Germany, 2006. border of the EU. They are required to 2 Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention ISSN 1404–3858 Vol 9, pp 2–30, 2008 DOI: 10.1080/14043850701610428 # Taylor & Francis ceccato: expressive crimes in estonia, latvia and lithuania Figure 1. The study area: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. adopt a rigorous approach towards serve to vent rage, anger, or frustration. maintaining border security. EU enlarge- In this paper, expressive crime refers to ment increased the need for knowledge homicide, assault, and vandalism.2 that provides the basis for policies to Moreover, expressive offences are asso- deal with crime in Europe as a whole ciated with stress and social disorganiza- when the three Baltic states became part tion. In Russia and Eastern European of that larger picture. countries, economic and political transi- This paper has two objectives. The tion has been associated with uncer- first is to present crime trends in Estonia, tainty and social instability which has Latvia and Lithuania covering the years following their independence and transi- 2As in other previous studies (e.g. Western et al. tion from a planned to a market 2003:47; Perry 2003:287) vandalism is regarded as an economy (1993 to 2000). The analysis expressive crime because it is a form of expression. Vandalism reflects youths’ ‘expressive emotional out- will focus on expressive crimes because lets’ in a social situation when they experience the rates of expressive crime have frustration (Mays 1970:53), expressed by acts that serve to vent rage and anger. As Sampson and Raudensbush remained consistently high in these (1999:609) suggest, ‘vandalism does not directly cause other more serious crime but creates a neighbourhood countries (see Appendix 1). Expressive environment where they are more likely to occur’, crimes are defined as criminal acts that indicating they may might share the same geography. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 3 ceccato: expressive crimes in estonia, latvia and lithuania generated grounds for violence. Recent that has increased the availability and studies in Russia and Eastern Europe validity of social, economic and vital suggest that social stress and disorgani- statistics data for scientific research. The zation during transition from a planned study also contributes to the issues of to a market economy are related to data availability and quality by gathering increases in suicide, homicide, and over- information through a survey of experts all mortality (Leon and Shkolnikov 1998; in each country who work directly with Gavrilova et al. 2000; Pridemore and crime statistics. Spivak 2003). Official police data from The structure of this article is as the Baltic countries are compared with follows. It begins by discussing issues on those of Europe, as well as other data data availability and quality in the Baltic sources, such as victimization surveys. countries, particularly crime data. The second objective is to assess how General trends in expressive crimes are demographic, socio-economic, and insti- presented as a background for the con- tutional factors relate to the geography ceptual framework for the case studies of of expressive offences in the Baltic Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The region in 2000. Geographical Informa- relationship between crime and the pro- tion System (GIS) and spatial regression cess of change is discussed and hypothe- models are used, with ‘country regions’3 ses of study are suggested. This is serving as the unit of analysis. Since they followed by the modelling section, where constitute three independent countries, results are discussed. The article con- national differences are also tested in the cludes with implications of the findings analysis. The novelty of this article comes and directions for future work. from its inclusion of the spatial dimen- sion of crime, which is often neglected in Crime data in the Baltic countries the recent literature devoted to the post- No recommendations have yet been socialist countries. Until recently, spatial made to unify data collection, processing crime analysis in these nations in transi- methods, or analytical procedures for tion was rare simply because data were European crime statistics. Each European not systematically available for all country uses its own system of defini- regions, or data quality was still a major tions, with distinct rules for collecting limiting factor. As Pridemore (2000) data (Gruszczynska and Gruszczynski suggests, one benefit of this transition 2004).4 For a discussion of the common has been an improvement in transparency problems with police-recorded data, see the European Sourcebook of Crime and 3They are polygons from SABE 2004—Seamless Criminal Justice Statistics (1996, 2003). Administrative Boundaries of Europe (Eurogeo- graphics 2005), which is a pan-European data set Another common problem with crime containing the geometry and semantics of the adminis- data from this source is under-reporting. trative hierarchies of 36 European countries. The average population size in 2000 for the regions in the three Baltic countries was just under 70,000. These 4Particularly for homicides, mortality data are com- regions are administrative units at county level, such as monly considered to provide a basis for comparison with in Estonia, and in some cases municipality adminis- police crime records (e.g. Stickley and Ma¨kinen 2005). trative regions, such as in Lithuania. Although they Since they often show the same trends, including for the differ in administrative level, they are territorially very Baltic countries (see e.g. Ahven 2002), we are going to similar in size. focus this analysis only on police official statistics. 4 Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention ceccato: expressive crimes in estonia, latvia and lithuania According to the International Crime The following paragraphs describe Victimisation Survey (ICVS) (Del Frate what these experts reported about and Van Kesteren 2004) the percentage of how and when different factors or events crime reported to the police was con- may have affected crime data quality. siderably lower in Central and Eastern Experts from each country were also European countries than in Western invited to modify crime definitions of Europe throughout the 1990s. the selected expressive offences (initially In the particular case of the Baltic based