Dr Joanna Tsiganou will present her recent research as part of our Research Seminar Series.
Many crime and economy specialists, political and social analysts as well as and media commentators have much too often insisted on the strong relationship between economic crises and the volume of crime. I intend to show that the relationship between economic crises and levels of criminality is not self-evident and needs further empirical verification. The data available suggest that although the volume of “street crime” (that is mainly, thefts, burglaries and robberies) seems to increase in the middle of financial crises at an international level, strong empirical evidence to prove the linear or the causal character of the above mentioned relationship is missing. On the contrary the Greek experience suggests that economic crises alone do not increase the volume of crime, because criminal behavior has mainly moral that is cultural connotations while at the same time it is strongly affected by institutional factors. Although Greece has been undergoing one of the most severe economic crises of its history during the past decade, the total volume of law offending behavior does not seem to increase neither result from economic parameters alone. Neither the increased poverty has “produced” more crime, nor does the country live in a state of violence and anomic chaos.
Joanna Tsiganou (Ph.D., 1988, LSE, London) has been Director of Research for the last 15 years at EKKE where she works on a permanent basis from 1994 onwards. She has been appointed as scientific co-ordinator in more than 50 national and European research projects, including the national co-ordination of the European Social Survey in Greece and the participation to the co-ordination of the World Value Survey for Greece, at EKKE. She has devoted most of her work to the study of law, crime and deviance, migration, social inequalities, discrimination and exclusion in more than 100 scientific journal articles and collective volume studies. She has also been author, co-author or editor and co-editor of twenty – six books (in both, Greek and English languages). She also teaches at Panteion University – Graduate Studies in Criminology, «Methodology of Research», and on occasion at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens - Graduate Studies - Faculty of Law and the Panteion University Media Department – Graduate Studies.
View the Lent Term line up for the Research Seminar Series here.