Criminality in Finland 1992

• NCJ Number: 148667
• Author(s): P Tornudd; K Aromaa
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 262 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Country: Finland
• Note: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, International Crime Statistics Program

Annotation

Official statistics on crimes known to the police and criminal cases tried by the courts in Finland indicated that crimes against the Criminal Code represented 48 percent of all known crimes in 1992.

Abstract

The largest category in crimes against the Criminal code involved property offenses. Between 1983 and 1992, the annual number of homicides varied between 107 and 155. In 1992, the police registered 155 cases of murder or manslaughter. Assaults decreased in 1992, and the number of assaults roughly paralleled the level of alcohol consumption. Robberies declined slightly during the 1980's, but the 1990 figure was 25 percent higher than the one for 1989. In 1992, the number of robberies was 18 percent below the figure for 1991. Thefts increased continuously between 1983 and 1992, the 1992 rate being about 4 crimes per 100 inhabitants. Victimization surveys in 1980 and 1988 indicated that property thefts involving individual victims decreased slightly, while automobile thefts more than doubled between 1987 and 1991. Embezzlements rose from 1990 to 1991, fraud appeared to increase at a high pace between 1980 and 1990, and recorded cases of property damage increased between the early 1980's and 1992. Recorded drunk driving incidents increased by 42 percent between 1982 and 1991 but then decreased by 13 percent in 1992. The annual number of sentences for drug offenses varied between 369 in 1981 and 931 in 1991. An estimated number of 2,500 criminal cases were mediated in 1992, the number of persons sentenced in 1991 exceeded 404,000, and 27,844 persons (7 percent of all convicted criminals) were sentenced to imprisonment. The median prison sentence length was 2.6 months in 1991. In the same year, 16 percent of all sentences were appealed. The average daily number of prisoners decreased during the late 1970's from a 1976 high of 5,596 to 3,389 in 1989. This number increased to 3,441 in 1990, 3,467 in 1991, and 3,511 in 1992. The prisoner rate of 1992 was 70 per 100,000 population. References, tables, and figures