Finland

Finland regularly reports hate crime data to ODIHR. Finland's hate crime laws consist of a general penalty enhancement provision. Reported police data include discrimination and defamation offences, which fall outside the OSCE definition of hate crime, although these can be disaggregated. Data on the numbers of prosecutions and sentenced cases are only reported for discrimination cases. Hate crime data are collected by the Police University College of Finland's Research Department, the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Justice and Statistics Finland. Finland conducts regular victimization surveys to measure unreported hate crime.

Hate crime data collection in Finland
Support for hate crime victims in Finland

OFFICIAL DATA

Year Hate crimes recorded by police Prosecuted Sentenced
2020 1177 48 42
2019 900 22 17
2018 880 55 21
2017 1497 63 37
2016 1311 N/A N/A
2015 1704 Not available Not available
2014 954 Not available Not available
2013 904 Not available Not available
2012 836 38 12
2011 1418 29 12
2010 1407 38 Not available
2009 1580 41 Not available

About 2020 Data

    The police also recorded criminal forms of intolerance other than hate crimes, such as defamation and criminal discrimination. These data are reported to ODIHR but are not included in the overall figure or in the breakdown below.

Hate crime recorded by police

Beyond this data breakdown, a further 407 cases of defamation and discrimination were reported to ODIHR. These do not fall under the OSCE definition of hate crime and are thus not included. With the consent of the Roma community, hate crime against Roma people has been included as a category separate from Racism and Xenophobia.

National developments

In 2020, a shadow report on victims’ experiences of hate crimes was published as part of the project "Against Hate", funded by the European Commission’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (REC) and co-ordinated by the Ministry of Justice. The aim of the report was to bring the perspectives of the victims into the discourse on hate crimes. Unlike the report on hate crimes carried out by the Police University College, this report sought out qualitative rather than statistical data, and the main focus was on the experiences and needs of the victims.

Furthermore, in December 2019, the Ministry of Justice launched a two-year REC-funded project entitled “Facts Against Hate” coordinated by the Ministry of Justice, with the project partners being the Ministry of the Interior, the Police University College, and the following civil society organizations: Anti-Racist Forum (Finland), the Centre for Peace Studies (Croatia), and INAR (Ireland). The objective of the project is to improve the effectiveness of work against hate crimes and hate speech. The project is aimed at, among other things, developing data collection, hate crime reporting and local cooperation practices. It has so far produced material and organised trainings, e.g. virtual mandatory training for all police officers. As part of the Facts against Hate project, the Police University College and the Ministry of Justice will look into all of the recorded hate crimes in 2017 and follow them manually throughout the whole process from police involvement to prosecution and courts. The preliminary results indicate that there are huge shortcomings in this regard. The report will be published at the end of 2021.

The Ministry of Justice also started working on the amendments to the Criminal Code whereby gender would be added among the motives that constitute grounds for increasing the punishment of (any) crime as specified in chapter 6, section 5 of the Criminal Code. The Finnish government’s proposal was introduced to the Parliament in February 2021.

INCIDENTS REPORTED BY OTHER SOURCES

In addition to incidents summarized below, this graph includes 2 hate incidents reported by Kantor Center as statistics.

Anti-Semitic hate crime

Date Type of incident Source Description
2020-01 Attacks against property
OIDAC
 Show info

Anti-Christian hate crime

Date Type of incident Source Description
2020-01 Attacks against property
OIDAC
 Show info

INTERNATIONAL REPORTS

No information is available.

KEY OBSERVATION

ODIHR recognizes Finland's efforts to improve its hate crime recording, data collection mechanisms, and local cooperation practices, as well as the submitted information on police records. However, based on the available information, ODIHR observes that Finland would benefit from raising the awareness and building the capacity of its criminal justice officials about hate crimes.

ODIHR recalls that in the Ministerial Council Decision 9/09, participating States have committed to introducing or further developing professional training and capacity-building activities for law-enforcement, prosecution, and judicial officials dealing with hate crimes. ODIHR stands ready to support Finland in meeting its relevant commitments through the provision of comprehensive resources and tailored capacity building assistance for police, prosecution, and judiciary.

Our methodology