Finland's prison population

[Eric]

Here's a paragraph or two out of the Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat about how one in seven prisoners in Finland are foreign citizens. As they give a figure of 444 foreign prisoners, the total must be around 3,000 for a population of about 5.5 million people. I've no idea whether that is a high or low percentage.

Ulkomaalaisten vankien määrä Suomessa on kasvanut yli kaksikymmentäkertaiseksi vuodesta 1992 lähtien. Vuonna 2011 ulkomaalaisia vankeja oli jo keskimäärin 444 eli noin joka seitsemäs.

Ulkomaalaisten vankien määrä on ollut kasvussa erityisesti 2000-luvun alussa ja lopussa.

Suurimman ryhmän eli 45 prosenttia muodostivat virolaiset, venäläiset ja romanialaiset. Romanialaisten määrä on kasvanut voimakkaasti viimeisten kahden vuoden aikana: he muodostavat jo toiseksi suurimman ryhmän virolaisten jälkeen.

If Altai hasn't got the time to translate these words, I'll do it sometime later.

Why, I wonder, are foreigners always significant when people measure crime statistics?

[altai]

Maybe institutionalized racism has something to do with it? I know some Russians who got harassed by the police, put to jail, charge with crimes they didn't commit. Actually, I know quite a few who were charged with all kinds of crazy crimes they couldn't possibly commit. In all cases they are later released/acquitted and compensations are paid to most, but one guy I knew who just came to Finland as a tourist got put to jail for almost two weeks. They released him saying it was a mistake. I guess he didn't know that he could get a compensation for moral damage so he didn't do anything about and he didn't get one.

[Eric]

Are Russians a "race"? You didn't answer, Altai, whether you had read that autobiographical book called "Ryssänä Suomessa" (A Rooskie in Finland) which was translated from English, as I believe, and describes the plight of a Russian woman who worked her way up into quite a high managerial position in Finland but finally left for Barcelona in the end because she felt frozen out of Finnish society as she was Russian. I felt ambiguous about the book. I felt a certain sympathy for the woman herself, whose marriage was also not the best, and had tried very hard to fit in. At the same time it did make me wonder why Finns have prejudices against Russians.

I'm sure that the loss of the Karelian Isthmus, especially Vyborg, after WWII are still an emotive issue. There are regular articles in the Finnish press about Vyborg. Judicial mistakes will be made with immigrant Russians, and the police can just act in a crude and prejudiced manner. But given the fact, as I have pointed out, that Russia took a large chunk of Finland after the war, it seems ironic that Russia is in such a hopeless economic and social state that people are running away from it to a country that it was at war with only 70 years ago. What is the point of conquering territory and then letting it rot? And the Russians refuse to let Finns build summer houses in the Karelian Isthmus, now part of Russia, yet they expect it to be their right to do the same in eastern Finland themselves. Level playing fields, and all that.

The Finnish paragraphs I posted earlier say that 444 prisoners of about 3,000 are foreign citizens, mostly Estonians, Russians, and Romanians. (The Estonians are sometimes, but not always, of Russian descent.) Evidently, the number of Romanians immigrants to Finland doubled last year and they are now the second largest group of immigrants after Estonians.

[altai]

I don't think there are many Romanian official immigrants in Finland, since Finns wouldn't let them into Finnish social security system, unless they are married with a Finn or have a regular job here, but there are many Romanian gypsies playing music and begging in the streets. They started coming to Finland in the summers not so long time ago, and immediately the police started harassing them and parliament even debated whether to prohibit begging (imagine parliament discussing a new law only to remove a couple of dozens of begging Romanian from the streets).

As for the attitude to Russians I guess it was the worst in the nineties, now it's probably better, since there are huge numbers of Russian tourists from Saint-Petersburg coming here every day spending a lot of money, but the prejudices are still clearly visible. I mean it's not a violent type of racism (and by racism here I mean general xenophobia and dislike of foreigners) like in the UK, but a subtle one, like in Sweden. For example, when you try to rent an apartment in Helsinki as a foreigner, or find a decent job, or even take a kitten from the Finnish hosts, you immediately feel how difficult these seemingly simple things become. I know some Russians who are highly educated and they have Finnish diplomas, they look like Finns (blond, very fair skin) and they even change their surnames to Finnish ones to fit here, but they still don't feel very welcome and can't get the jobs their Finnish counterparts get easily. Now there are already second generation Russians who grew up in this country, and I guess they fit here pretty well in their majority, but still I know some who were almost born here and by all means can be considered Finns, but they still emigrate to other countries becasue of labour related discrimination. But overall, of all big immigrant groups Russians adapt/fare the best here and they suffer much less abuse on average than, let's say, Somalis. Really, I wouldn't want to be a Somali immigrant in this country.

As for justifications, you can't justify xenophobia. I don't accept historical excuses whatever they are. Because by the same token Russians should hate Germans and the whole bunch of other European nations, but this is not happening. In fact, Russians like Germany very much and willingly travel there or go to live there. So, I attribute it to the insular mentality and a 'little nation' syndrome.

As for summer cabins, I guess Russian law is strict in terms of giving foreigners right to own land in Russia. That's why Finns have problems buying summer cabins on the Russian side. But I doubt many even try. The Finnish law allows foreigners to buy land, I guess, and Russians from SPb use it since they prefer Finnish summer cabins to the Russian ones (price, ecology, safety). In general, Russians have a very positive image of Finland as a tourist destination and it definitely makes an economic impact of this country.

[Eric]

Your first paragraph is what I imagined. Gypsies (or Roma as they tend to be called nowadays, slightly incorrectly) are not loved in many countries, especially in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. The irony is that here in Sweden the best integrated gypsies come from Finland and have Finnish as their mother-tongue. So when I see a gypsy woman in full regalia on the street, I know that when I pass her she will be speaking Finnish to her friend.

The situation with prejudice against Russians is more complex. But as you go to pains to point out, some Russians are blond and blue-eyed like Finns, others are Asiatic in appearance, others are Jewish. So you cannot claim that it is racism. It is indeed xenophobia, as Finland was rather shut off from foreigners until recently, and the experience with the foreigners next door during the Winter and Continuation wars was obviously traumatic.

I remember very well that when I was on a Finnish language summer course in Helsinki about 20 years ago some of the foreign participants played music too loud during a party at the residences, and the police burst in with a dog as well. They didn't stay long, but made their presence felt. Curiously, on that same course was a Namibian who was learning Finnish and must be in a good job now back in Namibia.

When I was young and lived a few years in Finland, I mixed a lot with young communists (Swedish-speaking ones) and these people were quite pro-Soviet. I remember the songs and the Schwärmerei for Russia, and friends of mine learning Russian. But of course since independence in 1918 Finland has been bitterly divided down the middle into pro-Red and pro-White groups. And obviously WWII didn't help. So you cannot entirely predict, when you meet a Finn, what their attitude towards Russians will be. Some Russians have, curiously, become Finland-Swedes rather than Finns proper. The Swedish language is a good deal easier to learn. One of the Finland-Swedish authors who is such a person is Zinaida Lindén, a novelist and short-story writer.

I'm sure that being a fairly rich tourist from Saint Petersburg in Finland is a different kettle of fish to being a full-time resident. And such people are hardly likely to end up in prison.

[altai]

It's true, some Finns are clear Russia fans. They tend to come from families with leftist background. I know one guy whose parents were kinda socialists and they put him into a school where he studied Russian. He reads a lot of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Then there are some who are afraid of Russia. I had a conversation once with a middle aged woman, who traveled all around Europe in a trailer, including Albania and when I asked her if she had been to St-Petersburg, she said she thought it was dangerous to go there. And this I've heard a lot from Finns. But then you see the same people going to Africa or Latin America without any qualms. Also, as you've rightly noted, the suppression of communist movement in Finland and the brutal dealings with the reds after the Finnish civil war (a lot of people were put to internment camps or shot) still resonate to some extent as this was basically silenced by the official historiography. In general, it seems there is a whole mythology developed especially in relation to the Finnish civil war/Winter war and Continuation war and Finns still cannot come to terms with the history. They even coined a term "separate war" to disassociate themselves from the history of their alliance with Nazi Germany. The sophistry of the "separate war" argument is amazing in its own right, and it tells a lot about the Finnish uneasiness with their history. Yeah, some immigrants opt for Swedish as a language of choice, and the Swedish speaking community here actively lure and recruit the immigrants into their ranks, trying to increase Swedish here, but the role of Swedish is diminishing day by day, and there is a strong popular discontent with the obligatory Swedish at schools and universities. The phrase "pakkoruotsi pois" is one of the most typical to see in any toilet in the university campus. But overall, it's still a nice country to be a citizen of. The social security works, everything is made for people to enjoy, the ecology is very good, secondary education is the best in the world, and there is a strong egalitarian tradition and wealth distribution is almost equal. Or was almost equal, since for some time now, the Finnish politics has been drifting in the same neo liberal direction of austerity and cuts to the public spending with tax loopholes for super rich.