Crime In Finland Research Articles

The deterrence effect of criminal sanctions against environmental crime in Finland: an application of the rational choice model of crime

Applying the rational choice model of crime, this study estimates the optimality of sanctions for environmental crimes, the social cost of these crimes and the expected gain to the offender with Finnish court data from 327 criminal cases in the period 2013–2018. Sensitivity analyses are conducted for the optimal fine, the expected gain from the crime and its social cost. The time-lag and uncertainties related to the restoration of the environmental harm are explicitly included in the model and the empirical analysis. The average fine was much lower than the optimal fine even when taking into account the constraint posed by the offenders’ wealth and disregarding the time-lag and uncertainties related to the restoration of the environmental harm. The use of prison sentences was also suboptimal. Even when the illegal gain was fully forfeited, the expected gain from the crime to the offender remained positive. Our results suggest a need to increase the cost of punishment by higher fines and reliable forfeiture of the illegal economic gain. They also point to the importance of systematically estimating both the environmental damage and the illegal gain from the crime as these were available respectively for only 24% (N = 79) and 3% (N = 11) of all cases.

Mental well-being and fear

There is a dearth of knowledge regarding the association between mental well-being and fear of crime. This study utilises several measures of well-being and fear to examine how poorer affective well-being is associated with affective fear of crime in Finland. In addition, the article explores the extent to which feelings of unsafety and generalised distrust moderate this association. The research comprised 2020 survey data representing the Finnish-speaking population in mainland Finland. Descriptive methods, median regression, and interaction terms are used for the analyses. These results indicate that poorer affective well-being is positively associated with a stronger affective fear of crime in Finland. Furthermore, feelings of unsafety and generalised distrust were found to moderate the considered association. This indicates that the perceived risk of victimisation facilitates the association between poorer affective well-being and stronger affective fear of crime in Finland.

Community-Level Relationships Between Homelessness and Crime in Finland

Evidence from several countries indicates that homeless persons, particularly those with a mental illness, are at increased risk of offending and victimization. However, there has been little community-level analysis of the relationship between homelessness and crime rates. In this study, we discuss the criminogenic consequences of homelessness and then use panel data from 261 municipalities over a 21-year period (2000–2020) in Finland to examine how homelessness is related to different types of criminal offenses. Results from random and fixed-effects equations indicate that, net of common covariates, rates of homelessness are associated with increased rates of violent crime, property crime, and public intoxication offenses. The findings suggest that, in addition to mental health treatment, efforts to reduce homelessness enhance community safety.

An Examination of Community-Level Correlates of Animal Welfare Offenses and Violent Crime in Finland

There is very little research that provides a truly sociological assessment of the structural correlates of animal crime. There is also no comparative, community-level research on animal crimes in countries other than the U.S. In this exploratory study, we examine correlates of animal crime across Finland. Taking advantage of Finnish data on reported animal crime for 294 municipalities over a 10-year period, we (1) compare community-level predictors of violent and animal crime and (2) examine whether there is a relationship between violent crime and animal crime. While several economic, structural, and cultural variables are related to violent crime, we find that poverty is a common correlate of both violent and animal crime in Finland. We also find that, in contrast to the U.S., violent crime and animal crime are not related in Finland at the community level. We discuss implications for future research and the ways animal crime differs in the U.S. and Finland.

Regulatory voids in the prevention of environmental crime in Finland

Increasing concern about environmental issues has heightened the need for the effective enforcement of environmental regulations and for research supporting these efforts. This study incorporates intersectoral analysis and examines regulatory voids. The aim is to analyse whether regulatory voids exist and how they affect the enforcement efforts related to the prevention, supervision and detection of illicit waste activities and, furthermore, waste crime in Finland. The Delphi method is used to analyse different aspects of regulatory voids in enforcement and crime prevention. The three-round Delphi comprised a panel of 74 participants from different sectors and had a significantly high response rate: 91 percent in the first round, 82 percent in the second and 80 percent in the third, respectively. Not only do the findings indicate that political, institutional and knowledge-regulatory voids exist, the study also suggests that the knowledge void should be further divided into informational and professional void – and, as such, there are actually four regulatory voids to be found that should be analysed. Findings also suggest that there is lack of consensus on regulatory enforcement, severe challenges in the flow of information and insufficient resources, which together form a contradictory regulatory regime based on trust between regulators and regulatees, on the one hand, and underlying assumptions of foul play, on the other. The study concludes that enforcement authorities walk a regulatory tightrope between compliance with and punishment of regulatory strategies, trying during the course of their work to avoid falling into the regulatory voids.

Creating and Maintaining Structural Hindrances to Criminal Justice Control – A Policy Analysis on the Normalisation of Parental Violence as a Crime in Finland

In the context of home, violence remains more accepted when committed against children than adults. Normalisation of parental violence has been documented in attitudinal surveys, professional practices, and legal regulation. For example, in many countries violent disciplining of children is the only legal form of interpersonal violence. This study explores the societal invisibility and normalisation of parental violence as a crime by analysing legislation and control policies regulating the division of labour and involvement between social welfare and criminal justice authorities. An empirical case study from Finland, where all forms of parental violence were legally prohibited in 1983, is used to elucidate the divergence between (criminal) law and control policies. The analysis demonstrates how normalisation operates at the policy-level where, within the same system of control that criminalised these acts, structural hindrances are built to prevent criminal justice interventions.

Genetic background of extreme violent behavior.

In developed countries, the majority of all violent crime is committed by a small group of antisocial recidivistic offenders, but no genes have been shown to contribute to recidivistic violent offending or severe violent behavior, such as homicide. Our results, from two independent cohorts of Finnish prisoners, revealed that a monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) low-activity genotype (contributing to low dopamine turnover rate) as well as the CDH13 gene (coding for neuronal membrane adhesion protein) are associated with extremely violent behavior (at least 10 committed homicides, attempted homicides or batteries). No substantial signal was observed for either MAOA or CDH13 among non-violent offenders, indicating that findings were specific for violent offending, and not largely attributable to substance abuse or antisocial personality disorder. These results indicate both low monoamine metabolism and neuronal membrane dysfunction as plausible factors in the etiology of extreme criminal violent behavior, and imply that at least about 5-10% of all severe violent crime in Finland is attributable to the aforementioned MAOA and CDH13 genotypes.

Crime News Trends in Finland: A Review of Recent Research

In this article, we present findings of crime media research conducted in Finland during recent years. As this body of research has mainly been published in Finnish, the core results have not been available for international audiences until now. The amount of crime news reporting has consistently increased both in the newspapers and in television news broadcasts during the last decades. A series of representative surveys also show that the majority of people read and view crime news on a regular basis and are thus constantly exposed to these media messages. We conclude our article by contrasting crime news trends with the development of fear of crime in Finland, and by discussing possible links and explanations to the relationship.

Measures regarding Sex Crime in Finland

Measures regarding Sex Crime in Finland

Think Nationally, Act Locally: The Municipal-Level Effects of the National Crime Prevention Program in Finland

This paper gauges the effects of the National Crime Prevention Program (NCPP) on the level of crime in Finland. The research design involves comparisons between municipalities that vary in terms of their participation in the NCPP. Is this characteristic related to improvements in community safety? The analyses utilize data from victim surveys as well as police statistics. Findings from each type of analysis suggest that active participation in the national initiative has not resulted in reduced levels of crime and violence. The study concludes with a set of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the NCPP.

The role of police visibility in fear of crime in Finland

This article presents a model for police visibility and people's fear of crime. Survey data were collected from 3,245 adults and 977 teenagers in two typical Finnish neighborhoods. A four‐factor model including two visibility factors (patrol‐car‐related activities and police‐on‐foot activities) and two fear of crime factors (crimes against property and crimes against persons) was constructed by structural equation modeling. Respondents who perceived the police more often in on‐foot activities were less fearful of crimes against property. In the teenagers' group, the same effect was found in relation to crimes against persons. In both groups, seeing the police more in patrol‐car‐related activities resulted in increased fear of crimes against persons and property. Our results indicate that a simple act for the police, such as stepping out of the car every now and then, i.e. not only in crime‐related situations, has a positive impact on the fear of crime as expressed by the public.

Population Heterogeneity and the Sociogenesis of Homicide

It has frequently been suggested that a high degree of social heterogeneity is conducive to a high rate of crime. This paper explores that hypothesis by providing an explicit statistical test of the relationship between a society's rate and various measures of the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic heterogeneity of that society's population, using nationstates as units of observation. The results lend support to the theory that the interaction within a society of heterogeneous cultural groups tends to increase the rate of homicide. The empirical analysis controls for the effect on rates of the age structure of the population, per capita GNP, urbanization, and population density; the results suggest that the first two of these factors are also important in explaining variations in rates. Rates of crime, particularly rates of violent crime, vary enormously among nations. In the popular mind such varying rates of crime are commonly attributed to relative differences in the heterogeneity of population.1 Informal arguments to effect have also been advanced by several researchers. For example, in comparing Japan's low crime rate to that of the United States, Bayley suggested that the substantial cultural homogeneity of the Japanese population has helped to establish a moral consensus in Japanese society, which in turn has enhanced the effectiveness of both formal and informal authority. Likewise Porterfield (b), commenting on crime in Finland, emphasized the considerable ethnic diversity of the nation's population. He concluded that, because of the stress that it creates, this heterogeneity may well account for the fact that the nation as a whole has a higher than average rate of both suicide and homicide (173).

Syphilis, Homosexuality and Legislation

The proportion of cases with fresh syphilis in males contracted by homosexual contacts in Helsinki before and after the change of the criminal law in 1971 was studied. Since 1971, homosexuality is by law no longer a crime in Finland. In 1964, only 2% of males with fresh syphilis admitted a homosexual contact. The same figure was 8% in 1970, and increased to about 50% in 1974 and 1975. It was concluded that a change of legislation concerning homosexuality, probably by several different routes, changed the proportion of cases of detected homosexually transmitted early syphilis. This was thought to be of special importance for case finding and controlling of the spread of syphilis.