Crime, Punishment and Justice

By Ulla Bondeson
Copenhagen, Denmark: DJOF Publishing, 2007

Criminological research and criminal policy in Western society emerged with the nation state and its interest in the development of rational public policy.  Earlier methods of punishment, such as public stocks, branding, mutilating, deporting to foreign lands, and the execution of criminals for a wide range of crimes, were replaced. Imprisonment for both punishment and moral improvement became a goal that Western societies sought in the 18th and 19th centuries.

With imprisonment the problems of crime and its “treatment” were addressed by humanitarians, some with religious sensibilities, medical and scientific researchers, and intellectuals with rational plans of prison construction and prison organization. Phrenology, eugenics, medicine and other “scientific” inquiries lived in a not too comfortable relationship with humanitarian and religious interest.  There was the desire to understand the criminal mind and to assist public policy by systematically identifying those who were mad, bad or simply sad. Correspondingly, there was the desire to create a predictive science of criminal behavior. Notwithstanding the poverty of scientific knowledge many, viewing the unacceptable conditions of prisons, demanded immediate reforms. For example, John Howard, Jeremy Bentham, and others held that prisons, due largely to idleness and association, created conditions that intensified criminal identification and behavior.

The breadth of these early concerns was extended into the 20th century. As Professor Bondeson shows the essence of the concept prisonization, created to symbolize the process of the inmate's socialization into the criminal subculture of the prison, is to be found for example in the early and disparate writings of Villon and Kropotkin. The 20th century has also seen an expansion as vast array of problems have been addressed by scholarship and research.  Thus medical investigations have seen the disciplines of biology, psychology and sociology develop an interest in the study of criminal behavior and in the formulation of effective treatment policies. This range of  scientific and scholarly inquiry, and of professional activity, in mid-20th century criminology is somewhat analogous to that of medicine, where the seriously concerned medical doctor desires to provide proper treatment, is attentive to  public policy, and where  the specialist, with strong scientific interest, not only provides medical care but engages in research to advance medical science. An important goal is attainment of a verifiable science, with predictive strength so that public policy can be confidently informed. It is within this broad and complex tradition of an emerging, multi-disciplinarian science, deeply concerned with the reality of both criminal behavior and our response to that behavior, that we best approach the career, scholarship and research of the outstanding Nordic criminologist, Professor Ulla V. Bondeson.  

Interestingly, Ulla V. Bondeson's career begins prior to her receiving the M.A. degree from the University of Lund.  What will prove to be a prominent career begins when, in her early twenties, she is employed at the Correctional Training School of Ryagården, Sweden.  It is in this institution that a highly intelligent, alert and sensitive young woman identifies, what is to her something unique and different in the language of young female inmates.  It is probable that earlier undergraduate studies in Classical languages contributed to her awareness of this verbal behavior, and her experience stimulated an interest motivating her to pursue graduate studies in criminology and corrections.  It is correct to say that her employment experience and graduate training shaped an excellent scholar and scientist, because all the qualities needed for these activities can be found in her first publication, “Argot Knowledge as an Indicator of Criminal Socialization”. The scholarship is thorough and insightful and, of no little importance, a pleasure to read.  In her review of the literature and the formulation of the question for research, Ulla V. Bondeson winnows the wheat from chaff, and hones her research questions so that a sophisticated and elegant methodology can be applied to the data. She identifies the acquisition of criminal argot to be positively associated with anti-social norms and values, and demonstrates that it has predictive value for future anti-social behavior.

With great energy and fervor Ulla V. Bondeson continued her studies of evaluation of correctional treatment in a comparative study of 13 correctional institutions, covering training schools, youth prisons, prisons and internment for both men and women. The English version of the Swedish book, Prisoners in Prison Societies, included in addition to a panel analysis and longitudinal, multivariate analyses, also a ten-year follow-up study. This must internationally be one of the most comprehensive studies of correctional institutions, and moreover made in a country that is well-known for its progressive criminal justice system. The detrimental results of the treatment at all these correctional institutions, aimed at individual prevention but resulting in negative individual preventive effects, led the minister of justice to declare that he wanted a drastic decrease in the number of prisoners.

Ulla V. Bondeson continued studying the effects of alternatives to imprisonment, such as conditional sentence, ordinary probation and probation with institutionalization. With an elaborate prediction instrument and lengthy interviews with supervisors, staff and their clients she proved that the treatment, aimed at individual prevention, was mainly counterproductive, effects she again calls negative individual prevention. She emphasizes though that recidivism is lower for the alternatives to imprisonment although these should only be used when the offences deserved deprivation of liberty. The Swedish book led inter alia to the abolishment of probation with institutionalization. The English version, Alternatives to Imprisonment – Intentions and Reality, has been published in two American editions as well as in a Russian edition.

Ulla V. Bondeson’s subsequent research has been varied, involving subjects such as Variations in Sentencing, The Interplay between Criminological Research and Criminal Policy, Victim Costs and Consequences, and Economic Crime.  This research shows a consistent focus, and there has emerged a fundamental theme.  A theme that states explicitly what is implicit in her first study; namely, that treatment methods found in correctional institutions have not been successful. And as her articles, The Global Trends in Corrections, and The Paradox of Increasing Rates of Imprisonment, show she finally points to the benefits described by the growing number of criminologists who believe that a restorative justice system should replace the existing criminal justice system. Restoring the criminal to society in such a way that is acceptable and beneficial to both is a good, having a law-abiding population is a greater good.

Another theme that has simultaneously been pursued by Ulla V. Bondeson is the study of the so-called general sense of justice. When referred to by legislators and judges she calls it a legal doctrine, as they implicitly take it for granted that there is uniformity in the public opinion and that the public is punitive. She has done extensive empirical studies of the structure and content of this public opinion and demonstrated in many publications that it is not uniform and not necessarily repressive. In fact, when the researcher uses detailed interview questions, specifying crime and punishment, judicial opinion may be more punitive than public opinion, although judges believe the opposite. Again, with great efforts she elaborated earlier local studies to a great comparative study of all types of social and moral values in the Scandinavian countries. Her book, Nordic Moral Climates: Value Continuities and Discontinuities in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden ( 2003; 2007) is a unique and complex study, with a methodology that is elegant, sophisticated, and powerful; one that can stand as a stimulus to researchers, and an example for future research.

Ulla V.  Bondeson’s scientific contributions encompass about ten books and ten anthologies, in addition to more than a hundred articles in many different languages. She has also been the recipient of many awards, starting with her doctoral and her habilitation dissertations. She has later also received the prestigious Thorsten Sellin and Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck Award from the American Society of Criminology. In addition, she has been nominated for the great international Stockholm Prize in Criminology.

Professor Bondeson was appointed to the national Chair of Sociology of Law, University of Lund, Sweden, in 1979 and to the national Chair of Criminology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1980. She has been a Visiting Professor at several universities in the United States: the Criminal Justice Department at the University of Minnesota, the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of Berkeley, Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, the Department of Sociology at Santa Barbara, UCLA. She has also been teaching at several occasions in Belgium and France, Japan, Korea, Mozambique, and Brazil.

Among Professor Bondeson’s numerous important research and advisory committees in the field of criminology and correction should especially be highlighted that she was President of the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology and Vice-president of the International Society of Criminology for many years. She is a member of the distinguished Steering Committee of the Campbell Crime and Justice Group. She is an accomplished scholar, researcher, and teacher. As this incomplete listing of achievements indicates, this has been an outstanding career, spanning fifty years; for students, it stands as a model.  Professor Bondeson has honored her country, her university, and herself.