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

NSfK’s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998
country via the brothels. The public called for a quick investigation, prosecution and
sentences, but the publicity had quite the opposite effect. Hundreds of men from all over
Finland flocked to one of the brothels, which closed down because of the attention. However,
another brothel operated during the investigation, continued to operate after the prosecution
and was doing well after the sentences. The fact that individual prostitution is not illegal, and
the fact that evidence of procuring is difficult to produce, fade into insignificance where the
wide demand for prostitution is concerned.
The moralistic crusade initiated by the press, resulting in minor riots and assaults on the
Russian-speaking population, may yet cause more work for the police than the actual
suspected crimes. On the other hand, the more responsible segments of the Finnish media
have reacted to the negative developments, trying to remind the public that being a Russianspeaker
does not justify being branded as “a thief” or “a prostitute”.
Accordingly, we should question the necessity of categorizing crime in terms of nationality,
ethnicity or citizenship when dealing with “Russian crime”, as such categorizations tend to
produce xenophobic and racist sentiments among the public.
In preventing criminality resulting from the opening of the borders during the 1990´s, Finnish
law enforcement has developed a sort of a security agenda for conceptualising the phenomena
and for focusing the preventive measures. This agenda, based upon experience, claims that
qualitatively the Russian-speaking criminality has brought practically nothing new to the
Finnish crime scene, except for the new possibilities that have opened up for Finnish
criminals. Cases resembling organized crime have included the illegal trade in alcohol and
tobacco and prostitution, as well as more severe cases of organized automobile thefts,
international drug-trafficking, procuring and economic crime over the Finnish-Russian
border. Although such cases receive wide public attention, they are not numerous in
comparison with Finnish domestic crimes.
Individuals of different citizenships and ethnic backgrounds have usually collaborated in such
crimes, without emphasis on nationality of ethnicity. Finnish citizens have worked together
with Estonians and Russians, Finnish citizens of Russian or Estonian origin, or with the
Ingerian Finns who hold Russian passports but have residence permits in Finland because of
their ethnic background. In addition, the criminals of different nationalities operate in
different territories.
Finnish professional criminals are known by the police to control parts of the Estonian drug
trade together with their Estonian and Russian counterparts, and dodgy Finnish businessmen
are known to operate in both North-West Russia and the territory of Finland, operating
together with the Russians by cheating each other and evading taxes in both countries. Some
Finnish businesses are cheating the Russian tax officials by systematic double-billing, but
Finnish officials have not been willing to report their names to the Russian officials, since the
crimes have not been committed on Finnish territory. Moreover, as some have said, cheating
Russian tax officials is beneficial for the Finnish national economy.
All this undermines the significance of citizenship-based or geographically defined statistical
measurements of crime, and its reliability when investigating the crime phenomena in
question. In general, one should speak of internationalizing networks of Finnish, Russian and
Estonian criminals, who communicate by speaking English, Finnish or Russian.
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