About PROTECT
PROTECT is a socio-legal research project about children's rights, crime prevention and public safety.
Main content
How should the imperatives of child rights, safety concerns and prevention of crime and social exclusion be balanced and protected?
To an increasing degree, children engage in serious violent crimes that are perceived as threats to public safety, including violent extremism, and terrorism. A core problem for the Nordic welfare states is how to provide public safety and prevent crime and social exclusion, and at the same time protect children’s rights.
Two key institutions play pivotal roles in addressing this group of children: the child protection system and the criminal justice system. Each system operates with distinct rationale, legal and professional concepts and tools, leading to different interpretations of child rights, the needs of society, the children, and the public. In spite of the weighty societal implications, the key systems and interactions between them are understudied.
PROTECT will advance knowledge about the challenges of integrating public safety with protection of children’s rights in the Nordic context. PROTECT will conduct pioneering interdisciplinary research by combining law and political science, innovative methodological approaches and cross-country examinations.
WP1: Legitimate preventive system functions
- Objective: Clarify the preventive functions of and functional relation between the criminal justice and the child protection systems
- Methods: Legal and conceptual analysis of formal legal sources
WP2: Children’s experiences and viewpoints
- Objective: Examining children’s participation and children´s views on public safety
- Method: Interviews and survey with children in child protection / criminal justice systems and their representatives/spokespersons/lawyers
WP3: The systems understanding of child rights and public safety
- Objective: Identify the current policies and practices to children engaging in criminal activities and especially the increase in violent criminal activities
- Method: Document and discourse analysis; interviews, survey data
WP4: The societal understanding of child rights and public safety
- Objective: Examine the general public understanding of child-rights, public safety and prevention of crime and social exclusion
- Method: Population survey
PROTECT
- Full title: 'Protecting child rights and public safety: Premises for the integration of child's best interest and crimeprevention'
- Supported by the Research Council of Norway (grant number 352367).
- Project periode: 2025 - 2030
- Project managers: Linda Gröning and Marit Skivenes
- Participants: Ingun Fornes, Siri Gloppen and Daniel Nygård
