Morality was a dominant theme in the 1990s, but concerns about morality seem omnipresent in the first years of the third millennium. The year 2002 witnessed the greatest corporate scandals ever seen in the United States, with immense impact financially and in human terms. Sex scandals were pervasive among Catholic priests in the United States, disrupting the lives of thousands of abused children. In Scandinavia, moral debates and scandals are of a smaller magnitude, and more often related to questions about the handling of money by politicians. This volume takes an overarching look at the impact of such moral questions in the Nordic countries. Its approach is multi-disciplinarian, embracing philosophy, history, sociology, and political science. Based mainly upon a survey of representative samples in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, this unique study combines interview questions on crime and justice with moral questions concerning equality, confidence, tolerance, and also personal, social, religious, political, and national values. Bondeson first discusses the Nordic countries from a historical perspective and in statistical terms. She then presents interview data on the general sense of justice in Nordic countries, in particular exploring how much social and legal equality the Scandinavians have achieved in their welfare states. She touches upon criminal behavior and victimization, and discusses crime prevention and punishment. Bondeson also reviews the problems and methods of the study. Finally, she adds depth to the statistical analysis by using a number of indexes of morality. A trend analysis illustrates the stability of these attitudes over time. "Nordic Moral Climates" is an original empirical study of moral values in Scandinavia. It is one of the few comprehensive studies on this subject conducted in any nation or group of nations. The book will be of great interest to criminologists, sociologists, and social theorists.

Prisoners in Prison Societies is a study of criminal career patterns over time, demonstrating specifically how and in what ways imprisonment has a positive correlation with later recidivism. The book combines original research and a ten-year follow-up study of Swedish inmates, surveying their attitudes on everything from political ideology to prison reform. The work is much more than a survey of prisoner attitudes, however; it also includes official statements and administrative staff assessments at the institutions examined. As a result, the text avoids the usual special pleading of criminological writings.Prisoners in Prison Societies analyzes thirteen correctional institutions, ranging from training schools to youth and adult prisons as well as a preventive detention facility. These four types cover representative samples of male and female, young and old offenders. In individual and group interviews, conducted with a time interval, the author finds that the form of incarceration is less significant in determining prisoner behavior than the fact of incarceration as such. Whether one looks at the data across variables or in longitudinal terms, the fact of criminalization rather than the goal of rehabilitation creates conditions of permanent incarceration.A leitmotif of the book is comparison of penal institutions and policies in the U.S. and Sweden, with an encyclopedic presentation of the sociological and criminological literature. From the American tradition, Bondeson distinguishes between program research and sanction research. Her notion of prisonization, as a special form of socialization, derives from the work of scholars from Clemmer to Goffman. Her work utilizes notions of informal social systems within formal systems, especially how the former preempt the latter. The interplay of original research at the prison level, coupled with a sweeping command of the basic literature, makes this book unique.

Prisoners in "Prison Societies "is a study of criminal career patterns over time, demonstrating specifically how and in what ways imprisonment has a positive correlation with later recidivism. The book combines original research and a ten-year follow-up study of Swedish inmates, surveying their attitudes on everything from political ideology to prison reform. The work is much more than a survey of prisoner attitudes, however; it also includes official statements and administrative staff assessments at the institutions examined. As a result, the text avoids the usual special pleading of criminological writings. "Prisoners in Prison" "Societies "analyzes thirteen correctional institutions, ranging from training schools to youth and adult prisons as well as a preventive detention facility. These four types cover representative samples of male and female, young and old offenders. In individual and group interviews, conducted with a time interval, the author finds that the form of incarceration is less significant in determining prisoner behavior than the fact of incarceration as such. Whether one looks at the data across variables or in longitudinal terms, the fact of criminalization rather than the goal of rehabilitation creates conditions of permanent incarceration. A leitmotif of the book is comparison of penal institutions and policies in the U.S. and Sweden, with an encyclopedic presentation of the sociological and criminological literature. From the American tradition, Bondeson distinguishes between program research and sanction research. Her notion of prisonization, as a special form of socialization, derives from the work of scholars from Clemmer to Goffman. Her work utilizes notions of informal social systems within formal systems, especially how the former preempt the latter. The interplay of original research at the prison level, coupled with a sweeping command of the basic literature, makes this book unique.