NCJ Number
215132
Date Published
2006
Length
202 pages
Annotation
This report examined Finnish professional criminals, their offenses, and their group formation by means of qualitative thematic interviews of professional criminals.
Abstract
The number of people who are actively participating in professional group criminality and semi-organized crime in Finland is rather small and variable, and the number of passive random dealers is considerably large. The largest volume of criminal projects is related to the imports of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and women for prostitution in Finland. Based on interviews with Finnish professional criminals, Estonians and Russians are selling merchandise to the Fins, but the relationship is one of business not one of subordination. Also, there was not a single organized criminal group in Finland in the 1990s, but a mixture of different kinds of groups of professional criminals, where the participants, offenses, and the time span of the activity varied greatly. Overall, the Finnish groups of professional criminals were either group criminality or semi-organized crime. The crimes represent a broad scale of criminal projects, with the common feature that they exploit the specific circumstances of the border between Finland and its neighboring countries. Focusing on 14 different Finnish groups active in the 1990s in smuggling and/or procuring prostitutes, and/or handling stolen goods, this study investigated Finnish professional criminals and their organizations in Finland and in cross-border crime operations. The objectives of this study were to analyze individual characteristics of the participants of the Finnish groups, analyze the committed crimes on selected crime areas, and to analyze the structures and cross-border operations of criminal groups active in Finland in the 1990s. Reference and appendix