Page 11 - The police annual report 2016 annual report 2016

The number of crimes reported to the police fell slightly in 2016.
increase feelings of alienation and marginal- isation, which play a key role in radicalisation and religiously motivated violence.
Indeed, the national action plan for the prevention of violent radicalisation and extremism, prepared in 2016 by the Ministry of the Interior, emphasises the importance
of combating hate speech and racism as one means of preventing extremism, and called for the police to uncover and effectively in- vestigate hate crimes, and to provide support to the victims.
The police streamlined its activities to combat hate crimes and punishable hate speech, and increased its training in identifying hate crimes.
In the autumn, the Government agreed in
its strategy session to allocate more resourc- es to the authorities for intervening in the operations of violent extremist movements. Resources were also increased for online police operations preventing hate speech and for the investigation of hate speech crime.
The National Police Board appointed a work- ing group to prepare an action plan related
to the enhanced prevention of punishable hate speech; the working group submitted its nal report in November 2016. The national structures and division of responsibilities for combating online hate speech outlined in the report will be implemented in the spring of 2017.
The National Police Board also developed and implemented a further training programme related to the prevention of hate crime, "Encountering and identifying hate crimes in police work", in cooperation with the Police University College.
The National Police Board signed a memo- randum of understanding with the Of ce for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), part of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), on the implementation of a Training Against Hate Crimes for Law Enforcement (TAHCLE) for the year 2017.
NUMBER OF HOMICIDES CONTINUES TO FALL FOR THE 20TH YEAR
In 2016, the police led a total of 35,400 vio- lent crimes, of which 1,167 were sex offences. There have been no signi cant changes in the total number of violent crimes in recent years, but an observation spanning several years reveals that the total number of violent crimes has decreased signi cantly.
In 2016, a total of 98 deliberate violent crimes that led to the victim's death committed in Finland were reported to the police. Re-
cent years have seen an increase in sexual offences; for example, their number increased by around 10 per cent from 2015 (1,054) to 2016.
The number of homicides has continued to fall compared to the 1990s and the averag- es of the early 2000s. The downward trend in the number of homicides has continued for twenty years now without interruption, with the current level being the lowest in the historical statistics.
THE POLICE, ANNUAL REPORT 2016 11