The National Police Board have produced their first operational environment dedicated to crime, which will allows police to build a more comprehensive picture of societal megatrends, trends, and phenomena, as well as their effects on crime and societal safety. At the heart of the analysis, is also the taking into account of the viewpoints of the different victims.
This analysis to be published is the first part of a broader police operational analysis initiative; and as its name suggests, focuses on crime. In future, the National Police Board intends to produce other analyses relevant to their operational environment, which will analyse the police operational environment in relation to demographics, public debate, technological developments, and regulatory aspects.
The analyses will help the police identify and understand phenomena crucial to police work as well as their effects on the society. Improved awareness concerning the operational environment will aid in the planning of police operations in a data-based manner.
This operational environment analysis reveals, that the quantity of reported crimes is decreasing, which has been noticed as a global trend in other countries as well. Criminal investigations are being challenged however, by cross-nationality and technological developments, which as leading megatrends increase the need for resources in criminal investigations. With these megatrends, the difficulty in investigating crime has increased significantly, as more and more crimes are committed in the virtual world, where distinctions, such as national borders, are not an obstacle to committing crime and operating anonymously is also easy.
In addition to the operational environment analysis on crime, the National Police Board will also release statistics of all crimes reported to the police during the past five years. Statistics can be examined nationally, on a municipal level as well as for each police department. In addition statistics will be released, which allow data concerning the age and gender distribution of suspects and those reporting crimes to be inspected for different crime types.
The statistics are based on data from the police crime reporting system, and new data will be updated on a monthly basis.
The operational environment analyses are produced by the analysis operations team, which is a part of the National Police Board’s Police Operations Unit.
The report can be read in Finnish on the Police website: Operational environment, part 1/6: Crime ( link )
