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The number of inmates in Finnish prisoners rose in 2023 for the second year in a row, the Prison and Probation Service of Finland (Rise) said.
In May, the agency warned that the nation’s prisons were filled beyond their capacity.
The number of people convicted of robberies and sexual crimes is increasing. The latter is partly because of stricter sex-crime laws that took effect in 2023.
The average daily number of inmates last year was 3,143, about 90 more than a year earlier. Altogether just under 6,500 prisoners entered the nation’s prisons last year, almost 500 more than in 2022, the agency said in its statistical yearbook.
The number of people behind bars for unpaid criminal fines, known as default prisoners, increased the most. There were about 2350 such inmates, almost a quarter more than in 2022. If an individual with unpaid fines is incarcerated under a conversion sentence, each day’s imprisonment is generally equivalent to 30 euros in fines. Default prisoners may be jailed for between four and 60 days.
More foreign inmates since Covid
Almost 40 percent of inmates who were released last year served less than three months in prison. The average length of the sentences was 11 months, slightly less than the previous year.
The share of first-time prisoners has risen from 37 percent to 43 percent over the past decade. The share of foreigners among the prison population is also increasing. The share of foreign citizens was 18 percent, up from 16 percent in 2022.
That year, the number of foreign prisoners rose by about 10 percent due to the lifting of corona-era travel restrictions.
People under 21 accounted for 3,5 percent of prisoners.
More than one-third jailed for violent crimes
The largest group of prisoners, 34 percent, were primarily incarcerated for violent crimes, with 21 percent having been convicted of murder. The proportion of those convicted of violent crimes has decreased by seven percentage points over the past 10 years, falling from 37 percent in 2022.
About a fifth of the prisoners were primarily jailed for drug crimes, 12 percent for robbery and eight percent for sexual crimes. About 40 percent of foreign prison inmates were imprisoned due to drug offenses, down from nearly half the year before, the agency said.
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