ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the period of 1982–1991 when the social-democratic government regained power. Neo-liberal ideas also began to enter the public debate seriously (Boreus, 1997). The welfare state started to shift from a large and dominating public sector toward a model in which non-profit organizations (NPOs) and private organizations also began to deliver social services. Crime victims started to emerge as an interest group along with an expansion of penal legislation. In the 1980s, both women’s shelters and victim support centers formed national umbrella organizations: National Organization for Women’s Shelters (ROKS) in 1984 and Swedish Association for Victim Support (BOJ) in 1988. This reconstructs and follows the first years of BOJ. It will show how BOJ emerged in just a few years without public or political demand. The entrepreneurs used their skills, engagement, and backgrounds to "make sense" of the organization, even though no crime victims were calling for support. They combined logics from adjacent fields and created a specific new “victim support logic.” After that, the entrepreneurs spread this logic quickly through the entrepreneurs’ lobbying of politicians and education of local victim support volunteers.
