Author: Nina Ekberg and Therese LjungTitle - Within the social services approach: A qualitative interview study of the social services attitudes towards young offendersSupervisor: Melker LaboryAssessor: Ulf DruggeThe purpose of this study was to see the social workers attitude towards young offenders and how this can affect the teenagers. The theoretical perspectives have been the theory of street-Level Bureaucracy, social constructivism and Stages of change. The material has been collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews and email-interviews with the social workers. The aim of this study was to examine if the social workers uses their theoretical experiences about their attitudes in their practical work and if their response can raise or reduce the young offenders motivation to change their behaviour. To collect information it was chosen that this study would only concentrate on the social workers opinions.

The freshwater pearl mussel Margaritifera margaritifera is an endangered species. To survive, the young mussels demand a fairly coarse bottom material containing an appropriate quantity of organic substrate to survive without suffocating. In order to estimate if a bottom is suitable for juvenile mussels, samples of the sediment are needed. To obtain samples a sampling device called the Mulv collector has been developed within this project. Bottom samples were collected from 18 stations in 4 south Swedish streams, Vramsån, Kling-storpsbäcken, Brönnestadsån and Bräkneån.

The object of this study was to meet with offenders and victims of crime who recently participated in victim-offender-mediation, in order to explore their experiences and feelings about it. The method of research was individual qualitative interviews with two offenders and two crime victims. The main questions aimed to find out how the participants felt about the mediation process, what experiences they had about the person they had to face during the meeting, and finally what thoughts they had about the crime and its consequences. In helping to analyze the results of the interviews,Reintegrative Shaming Theory and Theories of attribution were used. The former was used to try to explain the feelings resembling shame that emerged during the meeting, while the latter was helpful in order to understand the descriptions the participants used when they talked about the other person.

The aim of our study is to explore the thoughts and beliefs held by the professionals who work with the sentence youth service for young offenders, and how they feel about the same.How is the sentence youth service perceived from a professional perspective? How does the concurrence look like between the police, the social services and the prosecutor, when it comes to young offenders? What kind of difficulties/challenges do the professionals see in the possibility to effect the sentence youth service?The study is based on a qualitative method. The data consists of seven semi-structured interviews with two police officers, four social workers and one prosecutor.The results of our study indicate that youth service is a good sentence for young first-time offenders; the study also indicates that concurrence between the different professions is a success factor; furthermore the study revealed that it was very difficult finding adequate working places..

In the last couple of years changes in the legal systems treatment of young offenders has given the social worker more legal responsibility. In view of this, our purpose with this study was to examine how social workers and prosecutors apprehend the role of the social worker during the legal process. The study was delimited to look into the handling of young offenders between the ages of 15 and 18 years old. The questions we intended to look at were: How do the social workers reason when trying to see the need of a child within a legal context; Do prosecutors and social workers experience that they have different approaches when looking at young offenders, as a consequence of their different professions; What is the opinion among social workers considering the duty of the social services to administrate community service for young offenders; How do the social workers argue when determining whether or not a young offender has a "special need for care". These questions were answered through empirical studies where six social workers and two prosecutors were interviewed.

Abstract"Citizen Influence, Forms and Effects - A study of the Resistance Concerning the Establishment of a Juvenile Detention Center in Kristinehamn 2005-2007"Political Science, Johan Utter This essay circles around the concepts of citizenship and the questions if and how citizens in the modern democracy can influence and effect the political decisions made by the governing body on the local level. This is done by the means of a case-study concerning the establishment of an institutional facility for convicted youths in Kristinehamn. The planning of this facility and especially its planned location in Sunneberg aroused a significant negative response from the citizens, demanding a better alternative for the location.The proposition resulted in heavy protests from the citizens as the planned location was viewed as an important recreation area, where the citizens could experience nature first hand, close to the centre of town. As a result, some citizens living close to the planned location, formed a network called "Bevara Sunneberg", whose purpose was to influence the decision-makers and make the citizen?s voices heard.

It is hard to find streaming waters where humans haven?t affected the fish populations or the running water it self. In many streams the fish populations are over harvested and this results in a lack of older and larger fish. This is also the situation for many populations of Grayling (Thymallus spp.). To be able to develop management plans and to perform actions that improve the situation for the grayling, it is therefore crucial to know what natural, by humans unaffected populations look like.

The freshwater pearl mussel (Margaritifera margaritifera) is threatened throughout its range. There has been a substantial decline of the species and one major reason is habitat degradation. We investigated how the substrate composition of the bottom floor affects the regeneration of the mussel by analyzing data from the Västerbotten County Board?s inventory of the freshwater pearl mussel. The results implied that fine material such as fine sediment and sand might be detrimental to regeneration whereas gravel and boulders and in particular stone seem to be beneficial.

The purpose with this essay has been to describe and understand why youth community service became a penalty in Sweden. The political discourse in which youth community service was established has been analyzed with Laclau & Mouffe´s discourse theory. A social constructivist onset and a discourse analysis were the methodological tools of the essay. The result is two folded. Youth community service was created to strengthen the constitutional state, combined with high beliefs of the social services competence.

Studien syftar till att undersöka hur kuratorerna som verkställer vård inom socialtjänsten ser på denna påföljd och på sin roll i verkställandet av densamma, samt hur ungdomar som genomfört vård inom socialtjänsten upplever samma påföljd. Syftet avgränsas genom följande frågeställningar: (i) Hur ser kuratorerna på Ungdoms- och familjeteamet i Örebro kommun på vård inom socialtjänsten och på sin egen roll i verkställandet av denna påföljd utifrån den lagstiftning som reglerar vård inom socialtjänsten, samt den lagstiftning som reglerar socialtjänstens insatser för unga? (ii) Hur har ungdomar som genomfört vård inom socialtjänsten på Ungdoms- och familjeteamet i Örebro upplevt påföljden utifrån samma lagstiftning, och finns det någon skillnad i upplevelsen före och efter genomförandet av denna? En vidare angränsning är att jag har valt att fokusera studien på ungdomar som har blivit dömda för misshandel. För att besvara uppsatsens syfte och frågeställningar har jag genomfört kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer med personalen på Ungdoms- och familjeteamet, samt med ungdomar som har genomfört vård inom socialtjänsten där. Intervjuerna gjordes utifrån på förhand sammanställda intervjuguider och utgick ifrån uppsatsens syfte, frågeställningar samt den lagstiftning som utgör uppsatsens teoriavsnitt.

Landskrona har under de senaste åren handskats med kriminalitet där gärningsmännen har en ålder under 21 år. De brott det främst handlar om när vi talar om ungdomsbrottslighet i Landskrona kommun är misshandel utomhus och personrån. Trots att kommunen genom framgångsrika åtgärder nått positiva resultat där den tidigare uppåtgående brottstrenden nu stannat av och börjat dala, så ligger de höga siffrorna kvar som pekar på att ungdomskriminaliteten inte minskar i samma utsträckning. Det övergripande syftet med denna studie är att finna och förstå den normförändring som skett i Landskrona. För att studera detta har jag fört samtalsintervjuer med polis, Blåjackor, enhetschef med anställda och ungdomar på Ungdomshuset NOVA, samt använt mig av resultat från en enkät som ca 800 elever från gymnasieskolorna i Landskorna kommun själva fått deklarera sin relation och eventuella delaktighet i brott som misshandel och personrån.

There are lots of theories about participatory democracy, but rather few examples of how to create it in practice. In the 1930´s, scientists at the Chicago School, implemented some projects within the Chicago Area Project, with the aim to decrease the youth delinquency in the socio disadvantaged areas surrounding Chicago. In this thesis, I assess wether these projects, and in particular the one at the Russell Square Area, have some common features with the thoughts of two of the most famous participatory democrats, Carole Pateman and Benjamin Barber. My question is if the Chicago Area Project could be seen as an experiment in participatory democracy. I find that participatory democrats could benefit from the experiences of the Chicago Area Project.

The purpose of this essay has been to study if the social services adjust the choice of institution to every juvenile's need of care. If the choice of institution isn't adjusted to the juveniles the institutional placement can become a way to store them rather then treat them.To accomplish the purpose of the essay we have interviewed ten social workers with different worktitles and positions. We have delimited the study to three swedish communities with varying sizes. We have analyzed the material with Bourdieus theory of "field" and "doxa" and Antonovskys theory "a sense of coherence" (SOC).We came to the conclusion that the social service adjusted the choice of institution to the juveniles needs as much as possible. Although there are a couple of factors that some times makes the best choices impossible.

The aim of this study is to examine what social workers consider as ?challenging behaviour? among adolescents, but also to examine the connection between investigation and intervention in cases where such behaviour is being displayed. The questions of the study are to examine what social workers think of the instrument of assessment BBIC (Children?s Needs in Focus) and how the usage of BBIC affect social workers understanding of challenging behaviour. Moreover, it is a qualitative study and the respondents are all social workers with various length of professional experience who work with making decisions in juvenile welfare cases.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the sentences handed down to young offenders can be considered fair. We wanted to take an in-depth look at the penalties to understand how they work. To clarify our purpose, we used the following questions: How does organizing sanctions work in practice? What support services are offered to the young? What can be done to ensure sentences are as favorable as possible for young people? The empirical material is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with six social workers from two different municipalities. We also made use of previous research in the field as a reference tool.