Comment: Felonies committed by immigrants do not stand out in Finland even though crimes committed by such people are one of the favorite weapons used by far-right politicians in the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party to discredit foreigners. A study published in Wednesday’s Helsingin Sanomat on homicides committed in Holland, Sweden and Finland show that the felony rate among immigrants in this country is relatively low when compared with Holland.
A typical felony in Finland is committed by a middle-aged person who has a serious alcohol problem. The victim is a person who has been drinking with him or her.
“In Finland only six percent of homicides are carried out by organized crime or other criminal activity,” said researcher Martti Lehti. “The corresponding figure for Holland was 30%, which surprised us.”
A couple of years before Finland’s first Alien’s Act came to force in 1983, a group of foreigners and I handed a petition to some MPs in parliament. The police chief was present as well. When I asked why Finland was so uptight about immigrants, the police chief said that they wanted to keep crime levels down.
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EU-maiden välillä on erittäin suuria eroja henkirikosten syissä ja tekotavoissa. Suomessa tyypillisen henkirikoksen tekijä on keski-ikäinen alkoholin suurkuluttaja ja uhri humalainen ikätoveri. Ruotsin tilanne myötäilee Suomea, mutta Hollanti on jo toista maata.
Actually the news talks about homicide, not about felony. It would be interesting to see the statics of other crime types.
Thank you Jaakko for pointing that out.
From the study :
When examining relative rates of homicide perpetrators, foreign
citizens residing in Finland were slightly more likely to commit
a homicide compared with Finnish citizens (2.4 and 2.1 per
100,000 inhabitants, respectively). Individuals from the ethnic
Roma group ran a risk of 14.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, individuals
of Kurdish ethnic groups ran a risk of 5.1 per 100,000 inhabitants,
and people with a Somali ethnic background ran a risk of 3.1
per 100,000 inhabitants. Other ethnic groups with elevated rates
of homicide perpetrators included those of Russian descent (3.0
per 100,000 inhabitants) and Estonian descent (2.4 per 100,000
inhabitants). Pdf:
http://www.bra.se/extra/measurepoint/?module_instance=4&name=2011_15_Homicide_webb.pdf&url=/dynamaster/file_archive/110927/24663534fd502e98349e56f853deb99a/2011%255f15%255fHomicide%255fwebb.pdf
pun
The age breakdown in table 36 makes it clear that the propensity to homicide is very much higher in the 18-40 age band (nearly twice that of the 40-65 age band and 7 times higher than that of the 65+ age band). Now it just so happens that the foreign-born in Finland are strongly concentrated on the 18-40 age band. A study about a decade ago found that:
So these latest findings strongly suggest that immigrants are intrinsically much less likely to commit the crimes in question.
To find out just how much less likely, we need a direct comparison of homicide rates by country of birth in various age bands.
JD,
So, higher rate of homicide perpetrators among foreign born in Finland suggests lower rate of homicides. Come on!
And actually I have seen several statistics of some crime rates among some immigrant groups and their elevated crime rate is larger than the size of that age group. But there aren’t any good studies on the subject.
Because there are not that many immigrants in Finland and homicides are rare, it is risky to make anything about the elevated relative rates of any ethnic groups. But you can’t explain it away by saying that black is white.
pun
By the same reasoning Finns have a hugely elevated propensity to commit serious economic offences. ALL such offences in Finland have been committed by Finns and NONE have been committed by foreigners. This shows that the only trustworthy bank manager is a foreigner.
It is obvious that when an offence is overwhelmingly typical of a certain age group, then any population segment that is overrepresented in that age group will automatically be overrepresented in statistics concerning that offence.
But all you have to do is find the age-weighted homicide statistics for offenders born in Finland and born abroad.