It is rare to have a comparative analysis of the genesis and evolution of victim support outside a small clutch of English-speaking countries. Victim Support and the Welfare State is thus special because it looks at the birth of just such a development in Sweden, hardly a stranger to that world, but one that was quite individual, engulfed as it was in a welfare state where there was not even a term for crime victim. We have had descriptions in the past of the links between welfare and incarceration, and welfare and crime rates, but none between welfare and victim services. Gallo and Svensson's book is therefore doubly welcome, tracing, as it does, the shaping step by step of an unusual project through a succession of remarkably distinctive financial, political and policy regimes.
Paul Rock, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics
It is rare to have a comparative analysis of the genesis and evolution of victim support outside a small clutch of English-speaking countries. Victim Support and the Welfare State is thus special because it looks at the birth of just such a development in Sweden, hardly a stranger to that world, but one that was quite individual, engulfed as it was in a welfare state where there was not even a term for crime victim. We have had descriptions in the past of the links between welfare and incarceration, and welfare and crime rates, but none between welfare and victim services. Gallo and Svensson's book is therefore doubly welcome, tracing, as it does, the shaping step by step of an unusual project through a succession of remarkably distinctive financial, political and policy regimes.
Paul Rock, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics
Victim Support and the Welfare State is a most stimulating analysis of a central development in criminal policy. By choosing a non-Anglo-American country as an object of analysis, the book reveals similarities as well as differences in the expansion of the crime victim issue. The linking of victim support to the general development of politics shows its structural prerequisites. This intriguing book shows that victim support is both a cause and an effect of criminal policy, and that the emergence of the crime victim clearly has an entrepreneurial character.
Henrik Tham, Professor Emeritus of Criminology, Stockholm University and former President of the European Society of Criminology
