Can Economic Crime Control be Sustained? The Case of Finland

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present some findings from research conducted in Finland on the emergence and nature of the Finnish government's Action Plans to Reduce Economic Crime and the Grey Economy. We set out the origins of the Finnish economic crime control programme, a programme that, if not unique, is peculiar in its concerted effort to attack this particular form of crime. We then address at length the prospects of such a programme - which has had some initial successes - being sustained. We consider this question through three forms of material: first, through seeking to draw some 'lessons' from other countries' experiences of efforts to control economic crime, and indeed some general international trends in this regard; second, via a conceptual consideration of the processes whereby economic crime control efforts are likely to slip down crime control agendas; and, third, through a brief analysis of the extent to which the conditions which gave rise to the Finnish initiative in the 1980s have since passed. In a discursive concluding section, we present some data on the changing levels of support for, and interest in, the programme within Finland.