Interview data (sub-studies I and III)

I conducted interviews with a total of 12 different CSOs for this study, seven in sub-study I and five in sub-study III. Interviewees in sub-study I were representatives from CSOs that mainly worked with offenders, ex-offenders or people at risk of offending. The interviewees in sub-study III were representatives of CSOs that worked with victims of crime in general or were focused on working with victims of sexual violence or intimate partnership violence. In order to gain the kind of knowledge that I could use to answer my research questions, I selected the interviewees for sub-studies I and III purposefully (Mason 2002: 124) based on my assumptions of the knowledge that the selected interviewees would have. I

identified relevant CSOs by extensively seeking out CSOs that work with offenders and victims by contacting the CSOs that I already knew were working with them and asking their suggestions about other CSOs working with similar issues. I received a total of over 140 suggestions for different CSOs, networks or other actors working with offenders in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Scotland. However, the amount of those CSOs that were namely focused on the challenges of offending and not, for instance, addictions or mental health problems, was around 10 in each country. In sub-study III, I found around 80 different Norwegian groups or organizations in total, which could potentially be categorized as CSOs working with crime victims. In Finland, the number of such CSOs was around 60.25

When I identified suitable CSOs to be interviewed, I approached them with an email briefly explaining the purpose of my study and inquiring whether they would be interested in participating.26 Some of the CSOs I approached did not respond, even though I contacted them several times. This was more of a problem in sub- study III and consequently, the interview sample in that study became smaller than I had originally intended. For those CSOs and interviewees that were interested in participating in my study, I sent list of interview themes27 and informed consent forms28 beforehand (Mason 2002: 80-82), which explained the purpose of the study, its voluntary nature and that I could not secure the anonymity of the interviewees when reporting the study; it would be easy for other people working in the same field to recognize the interviewees based on the description of the organizations and the work roles of the interviewees. This is a common problem in the so-called ‘expert interviews’ (Alastalo and Åkerman 2010: 383). Thus, although the identity of interviewees is often withheld in research reports, in certain cases the principle of anonymity can be deviated from with the permission of the interviewees (Kuula 2011: 201-204; Tutkimuseettinen neuvottelukunta 2009: 11). Consequently, I asked for the consent of the interviewees to use their names in the final report and all the interviewees agreed. However, in the end, I only used their professional titles or the name of their organization as providing their names did not seem necessary. In sub-study III I also sent the interviewees the final article manuscript for comments before publishing as I considered this would be important since I cannot provide the anonymity for the interviewees. I did not do this in the case of the first sub-study and on the other hand, none of the interviewees requested this. Nevertheless, retrospectively I thought that providing an opportunity to view the manuscript would be important in this type of study and

25 _{These numbers include member organizations of umbrella bodies. Some of the}

suggestions I received were not CSOs but projects by statutory agencies, for example.

26 _{See annex 1.}

therefore I asked my interviewees to examine the final manuscript in the case of sub-study III.

In these types of expert interviews, the interest of the researcher does not rest on the person interviewed, but rather on the knowledge that the interviewee has about certain phenomenon or a process; the nature of knowledge possessed by an expert is different from the knowledge of a lay person (Alastalo and Åkerman 2010: 373; Meuser and Nagel 2009: 18). In the case of expert interviews, careful background work is important in order to gain meaningful knowledge (Alastalo and Åkerman 2010: 379), which is why I prepared myself for the interviews by reading the CSOs’ annual reports, web pages and other documents. In both of these studies the interviews followed the form of semi-structured interviews and my interview or topic guide (Arthur and Nazroo 2003: 115) contained approximately the same questions for all interviewees, although their order and exact form of the questions asking varied depending on the interview situation. Also, for some interviewees I had specific questions based on the background work I had done. Interviews for sub-study I were carried out between September and October 2013 via Skype video-calls (3), over the telephone (2) and face-to-face (2); for sub-study III between June 2014 and October 2014 as face-to-face interviews (3), via Skype (1) and Facetime video calls (1). Interviews with non-Finnish participants were conducted in English and in Finnish with Finnish participants. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim afterwards. Interviews for sub-study I lasted between one and a half to three hours, and for sub-study III, from one to two hours. The number of interviewees for sub-study I was eight29 and five for sub- study III.

The fact that interviewees knew they would not have anonymity in the final publications of my study may have in some cases influenced the nature of their responses, for instance, perhaps the interviewees were unwilling to elaborate on certain questions despite probing (see Legard, Keegan and Ward 2003: 168). A number of the interviews were also conducted over the telephone, which may have been reflected in the data whereby the telephone interviews were shorter than those conducted in person or via video-calls. Secondly, I also experienced problems in interaction described by Christmann (2009) in a sense that at times it was unclear whether the interviewee was still concentrating on the interview or distracted by something else, for instance, emails or someone coming to their office. The interview situation was more controllable in the video-call and face-to-face interviews, where the respondents and I were also able to communicate via eye contact and gestures. Indeed, the knowledge acquired through interviews is always knowledge that is generated in a particular situation in the interaction between the researcher and the interviewee (Mason 2002: 52; Ruusuvuori and Tiittula 2005).

Furthermore, as a majority of the interviews were conducted in a non-native language, this may have occasionally been reflected in the abilities of the interviewees to fully express themselves in the interview situation. If I became aware of some misunderstandings while transcribing the interviews, I thusly omitted those excerpts from the analysis or asked for clarifications via email.