Organised Crime & Crime Prevention - what works? - Scandinavian ...

NSfK’s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
Kauko Aromaa, Research Director
National Research Institute of Legal Policy
PB 1200, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
e-mail: kauko.aromaa@om.vn.fi
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Crime trends in Finland in the 1990’s
For Finland, the early 1990s were a period a severe economic recession, followed by a
reorganisation process of economic structures that is still continuing. The EU membership has
supported this process. The next phase of the restructuring process is the present, exceptionally
rapid migration wave, resulting in a situation where there are only a few growth centers,
with vast emptying backlands. Parallel to this regional polarisation development, there is
another process of social polarisation that is connected with a very high unemployment and a
tendency to weaken the well-developed Finnish social welfare system. The high
unemployment rate is an indication of a new problem of a large relative surplus population
that Finland has to deal with by its own economy, lacking today any obvious target area to
which the surplus population could migrate for better employment opportunities. In this
respect, the situation is very different from the previous period of high migration (in the
1960s), when Sweden was able to absorb hundreds of thousands of Finnish immigrants. In the
long run, the surplus population may begin to develop sub-, slum and countercultures that will
produce crime problems hitherto almost unknown in Finland.
One of the largest qualitative crime changes has to do with the expansion of the narcotics
market to cover the whole country. The relatively negative future expectations as well as the
easy availability of narcotic substances are almost sufficient explanations to this process. The
availability of narcotics has improved as the supply has grown due to the massivity and ease
of international mobility, and because the relative saturation of the central European markets
has made even the rather small Finnish markets increasingly interesting. A great deal of
property crimes are made to finance substance abuse - in this way, the growth of narcotics
offences is connected with certain property crimes (often such offences as car crimes, house
and other burglaries, and shoplifting are mentioned in this context).
In the 1990s, also a growth of homicides has continued. This trend is created through fourfive
different factors:
• the growth of alcohol consumption that, with the present consumption
pattern, furthers both acute alcohol-related violence and homicides that occur
between marginalized males;
• the urbanisation of Finland is followed by a growth in homicides as the
homicide rates in the large cities is somewhat higher than in other parts of the
country;
• The "greying" of the population means that the large after-war birth cohorts
have matured to the worst "homicide age";
• a professionalisation and toughening in the underworld, in part as the
narcotics market grows stronger, brings forth homicides that are related to the
power struggle, competition, and rule enforcement within this sector.