Page 10 - The police annual report 2016 annual report 2016

10 THE POLICE, ANNUAL REPORT 2016
CRIME PREVENTION
CRIME has continued to decrease as in previous years. The number of crimes reported to the police has decreased since 2011 by almost 70,000. In 2016, the number was around 809,000 crimes.
The numbers of just a few types of crime, such as nancial and narcotics crimes, have increased.
A clear transformation is evident in fraud crime in particular. Although the overall number of fraud crimes has decreased, the number of online payment frauds increased by around 40 per cent over the year.
In 2016, the police focused some of their crime combating resources on preventive co- operation with other authorities and organi- sations, targeting cross-border crime in order to prevent property crimes, and hate crimes that take many forms.
TOTAL NUMBER OF PROPERTY CRIMES UNCHANGED, CRIMES HAVE GONE ONLINE
Of all criminal law offences, the total num- ber of property crimes (228,296) remained almost unchanged percentage-wise (49.8%), although there were 6,950 fewer property crimes compared to 2015.
There were fewer burglaries of houses, holi- day homes, business premises and vehicles. This is a positive trend and indicates that the police have targeted their measures correctly, for example at cross-border mobile crime. The citizens also protect themselves better (including camera surveillance), which pro- motes the solving and reduction of crimes.
Crime is constantly transforming, and has gone online to a large extent. Payment frauds have increased a total of 28 per cent from 2015 (an increase of 4,211). Citizens submit their payment card information too gullibly to various websites, for example to redeem priz- es. Related to this, the number of so-called identity theft crimes has increased, with the
police ling a total of 3,300 crime reports in 2016.
Per capita, the most crimes were uncovered in the provinces of Uusimaa, Kymenlaakso and Päijät-Häme. In the entire country, 8,508 crimes per 100,000 citizens were uncovered. In 2015, the corresponding gure was 8,645.
A total of 311,100 persons, of which 19.9
per cent were female, were suspected in the 285,400 criminal law offences solved in 2016. Of all suspects, 14.2 per cent were suspected of more than two crimes.
In all solved criminal law offences, 25 per cent of the suspects were under the in uence of some intoxicant (the share of alcohol was 15%).
AUTHORITIES RECEIVED MORE RESOURCES TO INTERVENE IN HATE CRIMES
The number of suspected hate crimes in- creased by more than 50 per cent in 2016. The victim study of the manifestation of hate speech and harassment in society from the perspectives of different minority groups, published in 2016 by the Ministry of Justice, showed that only one fth of the victims had reported some instance to them. One of the reasons the victims had for not ling reports was that hate speech and harassment are so common that they are not reported.
Since 1998, the police have been monitoring the development of hate crimes, but the vic- tim study showed the problem to be greater than the statistics indicated. Hate crimes