The future of Nordic criminal policy evaluation

Abstract

Nordic criminal policy evaluation has unique features, such as ones related to policy context, policy content, and the availability of excellent register data. This paper briefly lays out these features and argues that the future of Nordic criminal policy evaluation could well lie in exploiting these features even more. It is argued that we should aim to tie criminal policy evaluation to social policy evaluation more broadly. And that we should aim to use policy evaluations to study margins of behavior rather than “just” measure average effects of reforms or policies. These aims will be hard to reach unless we think of and search for even better data than we already have.