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Police

Mistake in foreigner sex crime story, police amend their records

The number of suspected rapists of foreign background was a lot smaller than Statistics Finland originally reported, because police erroneously recorded one case.

Poliisin virkamerkki tietokoneen näppäimistön päällä.
Vuoden 2020 lukujen taustalla on tapaus, jossa yhtä henkilöä epäillään peräti 141 seksuaalirikoksesta. Tapaus oli kuitenkin kirjattu väärin poliisin rikosilmoitusjärjestelmään. Image: Heli Kaski / Yle
  • Egan Richardson

Yle reported on 30 September that figures from 2020 show that the proportion of rape suspects of foreign background was nearly 38 percent.

It has emerged that police statistics contained a mistake that distorted the figures.

**Read more: **Mistake in foreigner sex crime story, proportion of foreigners among rape suspects smaller than first reported

According to Statistics Finland, in the 2020 figures there was one case in which a suspect was suspected of 141 sex crimes. The case had been reported incorrectly in the police crime reporting system.

The matter was reported first by Iltalehti, and the National Police Board confirmed it to Yle.

According to Iltalehti the case involved a man who was suspected of raping his wife 141 times. Police had recorded 141 rapes in their statistics, but according to their statistical guidelines the case should have been recorded as one rape with 141 instances.

Iltalehti has calculated that the correct numbers suggest that people of foreign background accounted for 27.2 percent of all rape suspects in the figures from 2020.