Alljährlich werden in Stockholm herausragende Forschungsarbeiten im Bereich der Kriminologie mit dem Stockholm Prize in Criminology geehrt. Unter den Preisgewinnern der vergangenen Jahre finden sich so prominente Namen wie John Braithwaite, Terry E. Moffitt, John H. Laub und Robert J. Sampson.
Kürzlich wurden die Gewinner des 2019 Stockholm Prize in Criminology bekannt gegeben: der mit 1 000 000 SEK dotierte Preis geht an die ehemalige schweizerische Bundesrätin und amtierende Präsidentin der Global Commission on Drug Policy Ruth Dreifuss sowie an den gebürtigen Australier und US-amerikanischen Kriminologen und Ökonomen Peter Reuter. Die beiden Preisträger werden für Ihr langjähriges drogenpolitisches Engagement geehrt, u.a. für Ihre Arbeiten im Zusammenhang mit der Erprobung einer heroingestützten Behandlung opiatabhängiger Menschen.
In der Begründung der Preisjury heißt es:
As Federal councillor and Head of the Department of Home Affairs in 1993-2002, and President of the Swiss Confederation in 1999, Ruth Dreifuss was the principal political defender of a seminal set of experiments to test whether an innovation in the treatment of heroin users could help mitigate the crime and health problems of prohibition. In these experiments, individuals who had failed in methadone treatment programs were offered Heroin-Assisted Therapy (HAT), the opportunity to inject heroin provided by the state in medically supervised facilities. The question was whether HAT could be done safely and how it would influence the behaviour of the clients. The evidence showed that HAT greatly reduced the criminality of the clients, while improving their health. The result was the adoption of HAT as a routinely available treatment in Switzerland.
Professor Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland Peter Reuter helped increase international impact of the Swiss evidence as an outstanding translational criminologist for drug policy. Well before the Swiss experiments were launched, the Australian-born Reuter had spent decades examining the relationship between drug policy and crime. His work on this subject has supported the same insight as that of the Swiss field tests.
By studying the causal pathways through which prohibition and its enforcement influence crime and health, Reuter identified ways of improving outcomes in the context of prohibition. His multi-national studies on the effects of enforcement on drug prices and availability found that many of the benefits of prohibition can be achieved with light enforcement, while tough enforcement can increase crime without reducing drug consumption. By explaining how treatment innovations, including the Swiss model tested under the leadership of Ms. Dreifuss, he provided clearer policy choices to governments and police in Brazil, Peru, Malaysia, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Uruguay and the United States, among others.
Die Wahl der Preisträger ist sicherlich auch als ein politisches Signal zu verstehen, das sich gegen repressive Drogenpolitiken und eine Beendigung der weltweiten Verfolgung von DrogenkonsumentInnen richtet.
Die Preisverleihung findet im Rahmen des The Stockholm Criminology Symposium vom 10. bis 12. Juni 2019 in Stockholm statt.
