Homicide cases in mental state examinations in 21st century Finland

• In Event: Homicide in Europe

Abstract

In this paper, I present plan for the research exploring mental state evaluations of homicide perpetrators in Finland. The principle that offenders with mental illness should be sanctioned differently than others is universal and long-lived. According to Finnish legislation, when there are justifiable reasons to suspect that the defendant in criminal case might have committed the criminal act in such a mental state, which affects their criminal accountability, the defendant is usually remanded for mental state examination. Offender’s mental state may be mitigating factor or result to absolute discharge. The number of mental state examinations have decreased to one third, or about 100 cases per year, over the past three decades. Reasons for the changes include raising the threshold for remanding for a mental health examination by means of a legislative amendment in 2006, falling number of the requests for a mental health examination by defendants, and the stricter criteria for the reduced criminal responsibility. Concurrently, whereas practically every homicide perpetrator was remanded for the mental state examination in the early 1990s, the share of them halved around the year 2005. The proportion of the homicide cases in mental state examination has decreased more moderately since. The research questions are: 1. What is the trending development of the mental state examinations of homicide perpetrators in 2002-2024? 2. From the social autopsy point of view, what kind of cases are the homicides whose perpetrators are not remanded for mental state examination? The data comprises 1) Mental State Examination Reports 2002-2024 (the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare) and 2) Finnish Homicide Monitor Data 2002-2024 (The Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy, University of Helsinki). Statistical methods are applied.

Author

• Miisa Törölä, University of Helsinki