The number of serious violent crimes committed in public places in Finland is on the rise, according to a report by the National Police Board.
"Last year, about one-half of serious violent crimes in public places took place in the Uusimaa region. The numbers in Vantaa and Helsinki have risen in particular," Police Commissioner Ilkka Koskimäki said.
Speaking at a press conference to reveal the latest figures, Koskimäki noted that the share of young people emerging as suspects in violent crime cases has noticeably grown.
"Minors account for up to one third of suspects in these serious crime cases," he said, adding that incidents of violent crime are often linked to drugs.
Disturbance index
For the past decade, Finnish police have been monitoring the crime situation in the country's larger cities using a so-called 'disturbance index', and then publish the results every year.
The index records incidents of certain suspected crimes committed in public places as well as the number of crime reports filed with police departments.
In compiling the index, police record homicides, assaults, sexual offences, vandalism and attempted vandalism in public places as part of the population-based register.
Based on the index for 2024, Vantaa and Turku are the least safe cities in the country.
The figures for last year also revealed that nearly half of serious violent crimes took place in public places, with the majority occurring in city centres at weekends or at night.
This represents a "clear change" from 2015, Sanna Heikinheimo of the Police Board noted, when the proportion was just one third.
Police have also observed an increase in the number of violent crime cases where the perpetrator and the victim are not known to each other, which Koskimäki said was previously not very common in Finland.
In December, Social Democratic Party MP Krista Kiuru was attacked by an unknown assailant in Helsinki's Kaisaniemi Park as she was on the way to collect her child from daycare.
Last year saw a series of high-profile crimes committed in public places, including racially-motivated stabbings at a shopping centre in Oulu, a school shooting in Vantaa, and the suspected murder of a woman in Tampere on a busy city centre street.
