Statistics Finland: 113 homicides were committed in Finland last year

Interior Ministry: Figure should drop under 100

print this

Nothing particularly dramatic is happening on the Finnish crime front. This was the message communicated by the Statistics Finland annual report on the number and type of crimes that came into the attention of the police last year.
      According to Statistics Finland, the total number of crimes tackled by the Police was 786,000. This was more or less the same as in 2004. In the past ten years the figure has risen only slightly.
      The Police solved most of the crimes, 603,000 in all, though this figure also includes resolved cases where the actual crime was committed earlier.
     
One of the more interesting sections of the report is the number of homicides. Last year 113 people lost their lives through murders, manslaughters, and unlawful killings.
      This homicide figure has varied greatly this side of 2000. At worst it was 155, at best 103. The average for the past decade is 137 homicides per year.
      A couple of years ago, the Ministry of the Interior launched a campaign with the express purpose of reducing the number of violent crimes in Finland. One of the aims of the programme was to stabilise the annual number of killings permanently below 100 from the year 2007 onwards.
      Since 2004 saw 144 homicides and last year only 113, Finland seems to be heading in the right direction.
      It is noteworthy, however, that last year's number of attempted killings, 349 in all, indicates a slight rise from the year before. The fewer deaths despite the increased number of attempts may rather reflect advances in administering first aid.
     
There was a slight increase in the number of violent crimes as a whole. The figure for assaults grew by a couple of percentage points and reached around 30,000. Aggravated assaults in turn fell by nine percent, reaching just over 2,000.
      The number of rapes - just short of 600 - remained more or less the same as in 2004, though in the longer term the figure has been creeping upwards ever so slowly. The number of robberies, on the other hand, appears to be going down.
      The police also encountered an increased number of cases of domestic violence. More than a third of the roughly 4,000 victims were women. It is important to remember that the figure only contains cases that came to the police's attention. The whole ugly truth about domestic violence is anybody's guess.
      The domestic violence figure includes spousal violence. Of the 2,400 victims of violence between couples, 11 percent were men.
     
The number of uncovered drug offences, 14,000 in all, is analogous to figures from previous years.
      Apart from the variation in how the statistics were compiled, another difficulty with drug-related crimes is that they are hidden crimes within society, the uncovering of which totally depends on how extensive are the police resources allocated towards solving them.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Street crime declining in Helsinki - sex offences go down by half (21.3.2006)
  Police to increase patrols in Helsinki in response to rising youth crime (21.10.2005)

Links:
  Statistics Finland (the table shows preliminary data for 2005)

Helsingin Sanomat