Quantitative Methods

Supervision of bachelor's- and master's theses

Crime Prevention

My thesis revolved around the importance of school affiliation for more serious forms of juvenile violence and theft among young people. The research contributes to the relatively scares literature focused on socio-structural aspects of the school setting in relation juvenile crime. By combining integrated contextual theories of crime with a multilevel methodological approach, the overall aim was to update and extend the empirical knowledge of variation in offending between schools in Stockholm.  The findings indicated that there are systematic differences in self-reported offending between schools and that most of this variation can be explained by structural mechanisms of the student composition. Besides making visible the interrelationship between structural and social context, the finding also show that some individual level associations vary from one school setting to another.

In January 2023, I will start a new research project, funded by FORTE, which partly aims to qualitatively deepen some of the quantitative results in my previous research, focusing on teachers, school staff and crime prevention instead of students and crime. The school institution is commonly highlighted as a key arena in crime prevention interventions. This is a reasonable priority, given the large amount of research showing the links between school failure and crime. What is less studied in this field of research however, is knowledge of how these crime prevention initiatives are received by the actors who are expected to carry out the work in practice. Teachers and school staff have rarely been provided with the resources and qualifications for their extended mission to prevent crime. In addition, the Swedish school has undergone dramatic structural changes in recent decades. Against the background of these circumstances, my postdoc project aims to investigate how crime prevention initiatives aimed at schools are received, interpreted and practiced by local school actors. An overall ambition with the project is to highlight the neglected perspective of the opportunities of local schools to meet the expectations placed upon them as societies most important agents of crime prevention.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• School Variation in Offending

  Julia Sandahl. European Journal of Criminology

  Article

  This study employs Macro-Level Strain Theory (MST) as a framework to provide a better understanding of the way in which the structural and social context of Stockholm schools covaries with self-reported violent and general offending. The findings contribute to the literature in this area by directing a special focus at the interplay between the theory’s macro-level components and some individual-level mechanisms that may be assumed to condition the effect of strain on offending. Using multi-level data on 5,274 students nested in 90 schools in the city of Stockholm, the study notes significant contextual effects of anger and life dissatisfaction on offending. School-level deprivation appears to have a confounding effect on the relationship between school-contextual negative affect and offending. Further, school-contextual anger influences some individuals more than others. Implications of these findings are discussed.   

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• Hope, trust and segregation in schools: An analysis of contextual effects on violent and general offending

  2021. Julia Sandahl. British Journal of Criminology 61 (5), 1261-1281

  Article

  Influenced by the theoretical concepts of ‘Relative deprivation’ and ‘Social cohesion’, this study adds to the relatively limited literature of socio-structural approaches to the school–crime relationship. Multilevel analysis was conducted to explore the independent and interactive effects ofthree distinct features of the school setting—concentrated (dis)advantage, the proportion of students with poor future prospects and teacher-rated social cohesion—in relation to self-reported offending. Using information from three data sources on 4,608 students and 1,056 teachers from 77 lower secondary schools in Stockholm, the results showed that school concentrated (dis)advantageand school-level future prospects were directly related to offending. In addition, cross-level interactionsindicate that the association between student performance and offending differs dependingon school type.

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• Juvenile Crime in Context: The Significance of School Affiliation

  2021. Julia Sandahl.

  Thesis (Doc)

  Within criminology, research on the school-crime relationship has been dominated by individual-level theories and methods. This thesis contributes to the relatively scarce literature focused on the socio-structural aspects of juvenile crime by applying a multidimensional approach to the urban school context of Stockholm. By combining contextual criminological theories of crime with a multilevel methodological approach, the overall aim of the thesis is to extend the empirical knowledge on the importance of school affiliation for involvement in crime among adolescents. Student and teacher survey data and register data on the student sociodemographic composition in schools are analyzed to explore whether and why levels of more serious forms of self-reported offending vary between schools.

  Although the three empirical studies included in this thesis have their own specific scopes and research questions, they are all concerned with juvenile crime as a contextual phenomenon, exploring whether serious offending varies between Stockholm schools, and the importance of the social context in relation to offending (Study I), how much of the school-level variation in offending can be ascribed to certain aspects of the structural and the social context of schools respectively (Study II), and whether certain individual-level associations differ depending on school type (Study III). In addition, Studies II and III also explore contextual associations between offending and both structural and social aspects of the school setting.

  The results contribute to advancing the understanding of the school-crime association by considering the classic sociological idea that social context shapes individual behavior. More specifically, the findings indicate that there are systematic differences in self-reported offending between Stockholm schools and that most of this variation can be explained by structural mechanisms related to student composition. Besides making visible the interrelationship between the structural and social context in relation to offending, the findings also show that some individual-level associations vary from one school setting to another. Several implications for theory and practice are discussed. For example, it is suggested that the structural context should not be ignored in attempts to understand the school-crime relationship. In addition, and in relation to this, it is argued that there is a need for a shift towards a more realistic view of schools as potential arenas for crime prevention.

  Read more about Juvenile Crime in Context

Show all publications by Julia Kristin Sandahl at Stockholm University