Exporting Justice: Introducing the Scandinavian Penal Aid Database

• In Event: Advances in Quantitative Methods Panel 3: Innovations in Criminal Justice Metrics and Administrative Data

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new database measuring penal aid – exports of models, money, personnel, institutions, laws, technologies, and epistemologies related to the complex of crime and justice – in Scandinavian development aid. The Scandinavian penal aid database makes three contributions to data on the ‘crime-development’ nexus in global criminology. First, it introduces a new conceptual and empirical category of development aid. Second, it measures how penal aid has developed over time. Third, it distinguishes among different types of penal aid, its geographical range, and the types of actors involved in its dispersion. Theory suggest that global crime governance as part of the post-Cold War liberal international order grew increasingly interventionist throughout the past three decades. Our preliminary findings show that compared to the early 2000s penal aid spending tripled by 2022 from around 78 million to 2.6 billion USD. By showing how Scandinavian penal aid incrementally increased from 1990 – 2022, we demonstrate how Scandinavian development aid has become more concerned with developing core aspects of statehood, namely the governance of crime and criminal justice outside its own territories.

Authors

• Kjersti Lohne, University of Oslo

• Andreea Ioana Alecu, University of Oslo

• Katrine Antonsen, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo