Welcome to the Stockholm Criminology Symposium

Your excellencies, prizewinners, participants, ladies and gentlemen. A sincere welcome to the Stockholm Criminology Symposium 2025.

We at Brå have the great honour of organizing The Stockholm Criminology Symposium in conjunction with the award ceremony for The Stockholm Prize in Criminology. This year the award celebrates 20 years, and we are happy to be able to give extra attention to this anniversary at the Jerry Lee lecture on the last day of the symposium, as the two chairs of the award jury reflect on the research that has been awarded during these 20 years.

The main theme this year is Justice and rationality in correctional policies and practices, which is in line with the work of the two winners of The Stockholm Prize in Criminology 2025, Ms. Frances Crook and Mr. Bryan Stevenson. During my years in the Swedish police, starting off as police officer, I tried to help many people to the best of my ability. But of course, I was also involved in holding people accountable for criminal acts. Many of them were convicted, and many imprisoned and some sentenced to long prison terms. When it comes to such issues, we must always consider if we are were doing the right things, and find out if it is possible to do things differently. Therefore, I very much appreciate that we under this theme are able to learn more and discuss how we can provide fair responses to crime, but also to provide opportunities for rehabilitation to heal and improve.

Throughout the last decades there has been a digital revolution in society – and criminals have not been slow to adapt to these opportunities. And in the fight against crime and in criminology, we on the “good side”, must be even further ahead in the use of digital technology. That is why we this year have the special theme Digitalization in crime, in tackling crime, and in criminology, with plenty of presentations of knowledge we need to master, to become better at using the latest technology in crime prevention, in the investigation of crime, and also in courts – and then of course always in a legally secure manner.

Besides that, we have the ever present and broader theme Contemporary criminology, where many presentations will provide us with an overview of the current state of knowledge in many areas of criminology, crime policy, related fields of research, and relevant experiences on decision making and practice.

In addition to the above, we arrange another two major plenary sessions. The first one is the opening discussion called Prizewinners’ Advice to Policy, where the Swedish Minister for Justice Mr. Gunnar Strömmer will put forward questions to be answered by the prizewinners Ms. Frances Crook and Mr. Bryan Stevenson. The second one is the Prizewinners’ lecture, where the laureates themselves will present their experiences and endeavours, held on the second day of the symposium. This will be followed by the exiting grand prize ceremony, where the prize will be presented by Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden.

A warm welcome to all of you to the event and I am confident that we together will have three rewarding and inspiring days, that will contribute to the good for all of us.

Jonas Trolle
Acting Director General, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention