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Per-Olof Wikström, Professor of Ecological and Developmental Criminology, Director of the Centre for Analytic Criminology, and Fellow of Girton College, Travis Warren Hirschi (University of Arizona) and Cathy Spatz Widom (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) have been awarded the 2016 Stockholm Prize in Criminology.

The winners are awarded the prize in recognition of their important joint advance in knowledge about how parents and peers shape successes, or failures, in preventing adult violence and crime.

The Stockholm Prize in Criminology is an international prize in the field of criminology. It has been established under the aegis of the Swedish Ministry of Justice.The prize is awarded for outstanding achievements in criminological research or for the application of research results by practitioners for the reduction of crime and the advancement of human rights.

The work of Per-Olof Wikström offers the most detailed evidence on the dynamic processes by which children negotiate their daily lives between their parents and peers.

In a ten-year study of 716 families in the ethnically diverse city of Peterborough, Wikström developed his own Situational Action Theory. Measuring behaviour by day-by-day tracking of where the adolescents were, with how many peers, and in what criminogenic or morally hazardous environments, Wikström was able to test predictions of criminality in new ways.

His data included exposure to morally hazardous situations, as well as teenagers’ moral beliefs and propensity to commit crimes. By frequently interviewing parents as well as children, Wikström added major insights into the role parents play in preventing juvenile crime by restricting access to criminogenic peers and shaping the morality of their children.

The prize ceremony will take place in the Stockholm City Hall on June 15th, 2016.

Date awarded

11 November 2015

Subjects

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Per-Olof Wikström