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THE STOPPED-ETHNIC PROFILING IN FINLAND
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... Although both the Minority Ombudsman and the Parliamentary Ombudsman recommended that police should register the stop and the reason for the ID check, no such requirement is included in the reformed law (Himanen, 2021). Thus, it remains impossible in practice for the public to evaluate the extent of immigration checks since the statistics that the police collect are not publicly available (Keskinen et al., 2018). For the same reason, there is no quantitative basis for evaluating how successful the reform was. ...
... There are individual testimonies that the powers under s.1 of the Police Act and search powers are abused in the context of traffic stops, public safety and public order operations (Keskinen et al., 2018). However, from individual testimonies, it is often difficult to separate cases in which police had looked for a specific suspect from cases in which police had conducted street-level stops on their own initiative. ...
... In common with most POLSTOPS countries, ethnic discrimination is the main concern and source of conflict around police stops (Keskinen et al., 2018). This is despite the prohibition on ethnic profiling and direct or indirect discrimination (Non-Discrimination Act, s.5). ...
Police stops are pervasive across Europe, but their legal regulation is heterogeneous, with differences in legal structure, accountability and deployment. This paper examines the regulatory frameworks governing police stops in England and Wales, Finland and France to enable cross-jurisdictional comparisons. This framework is divided into three characteristics: the legal structure, discretion and legal safeguards, and the justification for the power. The analysis reveals commonalities and major differences in the legal powers and safeguards, including some very lax regulation. Some elements appear more central in ensuring effective oversight. There is, however, no simple connection between the regulatory framework and the negative impacts. High-level discretion of police leadership and security authorities and political justifications emphasising deterring crime and security threats diminish the effectiveness of other regulatory components.
... Instead, the Alien Act provides with the police flexible administrative and coercive measures for the control of mobile populations, including immigration detention and immigration checks. In addition to immigration controls being a part of normal patrolling and traffic control, the police have also conducted special operations in the urban space for uncovering deportable people, involving ethnic profiling and racialized practices (see Keskinen et al., 2018). Overall, criminal sanctions for immigration violations have been rather insignificant in immigration enforcement (Aliverti, 2012), as violations of entry or residency regulations directly enable the removal of the persons concerned. ...
In Finland, security concerns have always prevailed in immigration enforcement, despite the relatively low share of immigrant population. Historically, immigration controls have been a police matter in Finland, involving a strong emphasis on public order and security concerns and sharing similarities with vagrancy laws in the control of mobile poor people. Despite the introduction of a legal framework regulating immigration enforcement since the 1980s, immigration law provides broad discretionary powers for the police to control foreign nationals and impose administrative coercive measures with little judicial supervision. Immigration enforcement measures remain largely separate from the criminal justice system: the immigration authorities possess considerable discretionary powers to remove foreign offenders at low thresholds, depending on the legal status of foreign nationals. The police use considerable efforts for removals, with immigration detention being a routine practice in the control of deportable foreign nationals, including rejected asylum seekers, irregular migrants, and foreign offenders. The Finnish case demonstrates a long history of police powers and administrative coercive measures in the control of mobile populations outside the criminal justice system, pointing to the need for theoretical attention to police powers and the public order and security framework in immigration enforcement in border criminology discussions.
This chapter focuses on institutional conditions and equality. Both language and religious minorities face unnecessary difficulties in Finnish prisons, and the double punishment of deportation brings severe grievances to many prisoners during incarceration. One important theme in the chapter is the nature and scale of officers’ racist behaviour, from which a large consensus exists among officers and prisoners with various backgrounds. The latter part of the chapter discusses the adaptation of officers to the changing prisoner population. I explain prison-related reasons and interaction situations that invoke racism among officers and corresponding aspects that foster positive change.
Many research studies have premised that ethnicity or minority status is one of the most striking factors producing apprehension or dissatisfaction with the police. This paper discusses African and Asian migrants’ perceptions and anxieties about policing during the COVID-19 period in Finland. Migrants often bring unique perceptions and anxieties that contribute to their vulnerability within the broader society. The findings in this study indicate that most of the respondents are concerned about the police based on their anxieties or perceptions influence certain attitudes towards the police, whether negative or positive. This paper argues that minorities often marginalised in societal hierarchies, perceive bias in police attitudes and behaviours, which they view as reflective of the broader Finnish policing ideology.
Racial profiling is a form of state violence that has profound and impactful consequences and constitutes a significant social issue. Drawing on intersectional analyses of policing and criminalization, this chapter seeks to enhance our understanding of racial profiling, its complexities, and its effects. Relying on empirical data from Switzerland and Germany, we propose directing attention toward three specific aspects within the context of policing in Europe. First, we argue that the complex and multifaceted instances of racial profiling necessitate an examination of numerous, interconnected forms of inequality, surveillance, and violence. Second, we argue that it is necessary to highlight intersecting and intertwined institutional assemblages that create, support, and sustain policing practices within the punitive state apparatus. Third, we emphasize the importance of acknowledging the differences in both the consequences faced by individuals subjected to racial profiling and their diverse responses to such experiences. By exploring various facets of inequality, institutional dynamics, and individual experiences, our objective is to show how an intersectional approach can enrich the depth of analysis concerning racism and contribute to a more comprehensive analysis of struggles against police violence.
Large-scale public discussions about ethnic and racial profiling started in Finland in 2008, although the history of the phenomenon is clearly longer. In particular, the Roma minority has suffered from extensive police control throughout the post-independence era. While police controls of the Roma have raised public concern, most debates concerning police stops have focused on identity checks conducted as part of internal immigration controls. This chapter analyses the different phases in the public discussions, their framing and central actors, as well as the legislative effects of the debates. We identify three phases: (1) the emergence of the public discussions on ethnic profiling, (2) the legal reform in 2013–2015 and (3) the intensification of the public debates after the legal reform. In the first and second phases, the main actors are the Minority Ombudsman, other authorities and European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI). In the third phase, the representatives of the police are challenged by non-discrimination authorities, journalists, civil society organisations, researchers and individuals reporting ethnic profiling. The public debates have also shifted from ethnic and racial profiling to cover racism in the police more broadly.
In this chapter, we consider some key aspects of data, transparency and accountability of police stops. What practices exist across Europe in relation to the recording of police stops and public availability of data? We explore what is meant by data quality and why it is important in the governance of police stops. We consider various potential intended purposes and uses of data in relation to oversight, for example, in relation to transparency, public confidence, effectiveness and equity. What role does data have in exploring the distribution of this police power e.g. proportionality and potential discrimination? How might data be used to facilitate reflection, learning and improvement? Case studies and vignettes are used to explore lessons learned and good practice examples in bringing improvements to data, transparency and governance of police stops. Concerns, challenges and unintended consequences regarding various aspects of the usage of data for oversight purposes are explored.
Research shows that young people within ethnic minorities are subjected to police control more often than others, which seems to have a damaging effect on their trust in the police as well as on their wider sense of belonging. What is less often researched is how these young people deal with being over-policed. This article explores narratives of over-policing from those targeted by the police in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. By highlighting the patterns in these narratives in cross-national interview data, we seek to understand how young people manage interactions with the police and being stigmatised and ethnically profiled. The article distinguishes between three categories of narratives, (a) practical (b) emotional and (c) analytical, which the young people invoke and employ when they discuss their experiences and assessments of the police. The article concludes that we need a more dynamic perspective to understand and analyse how targeted groups constitute agency, resistance and active responses to ethnic profiling or labelling. Being young and belonging to an ethnic minority in the Nordic countries means developing and employing everyday tactics to both manage and account for the risk of police encounters.
While general trust in the police is high in Finland, young people's encounters with the police can be problematic. The starting point for this research was the observation that young people are experiencing higher levels of police control despite the lack of a corresponding rise in youth delinquency. Furthermore, the rapid rise of private security in many Western countries has changed the landscape of social control. This study provides new information about encounters between young people, the police and private security guards. It focused on social control directed at youth delinquency, alcohol use and the free time activities of young people. The study used mixed methods, drawing on a Finnish self-report delinquency survey (N=5 826), and on nine focus group interviews with 31 young people.
The findings indicated that police and security guard interventions were highly prevalent among minors: 40 percent had experienced such interventions. Police and security guard interventions disproportionately targeted young people from lower social classes, and those living in non-nuclear families and cities, even when differences in delinquency were taken into account. Furthermore, delinquency and heavy drinking increased the likelihood of interventions.
The study also examined how young people perceived encounters with policing agents. Fair and respectful treatment of young people was the key to good relations. Young people perceived encounters as fair when the interactions were friendly, peaceful and predictable. Furthermore, emotional factors, such as the ability of policing agents to be empathetic and control their own negative emotions, enforced trust. Aggressive and impolite treatment, on the other hand, challenged trust. The study also showed that young people have more trust and confidence in the police than in private security guards. Young people trusted the police more because they considered them better educated and their actions more legitimate and respectful. Security guards were perceived as often exceeding their legal rights and acting unfairly.
The study emphasizes that within the context of this new form of public-private social control there is a need to understand the positive and negative effects of policing in a broad sense. Negatively experienced encounters can challenge young people's sense of social belonging and their trust in other people. Nevertheless, the study also shows that positive encounters can improve the relations and increase trust between young people and policing agents.
http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-51-0638-4
Internal borders are a major but understudied site of crimmigration as most scholarship has focused on external borders (Van der Woude and Van Berlo, 2015). Internal borders were supposed to disappear under the principle of free movement within the European Union. But today we see EU member states policing the borders inside Schengen, checking identification, verifying passage, and regulating mobility in so-called ‘gray zones’. This article investigates this type of policing within the EU, focusing on the case of the Netherlands. It argues that the policing of internal borders is highly dependent upon discretionary power, a significant factor in the crimmigration process that we do not know enough about. Following Hawkins (1992, 2003), Schneider (1992), and Bushway and Forst (2013) on discretion and discretionary decision-making, we examine the interaction between decisions by law-makers and policy-makers that create discretionary space for law enforcement officials on the ground, and the way in which these street-level bureaucrats perceive the discretionary space attributed to them. By zeroing in on the interaction between these two actors, we aim to find the discretionary decision that matters the most in terms of explaining the crimmigration practices, offering a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach to border control. We discuss the implications of this power and the consequences for the European Project as such.
Claudia Rankine, Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University and winner of the MacArthur Fellowship, shares two poems from her bestselling collection, Citizen: An American Lyric, that express thematic and formal links to the concept and force of smoke.
NOW A NEW YORK TIMES, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, INDIEBOUND, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, CHRONICLE HERALD AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER | NAMED A BEST/MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2017 BY: The Washington Post • Bustle • Men's Journal • The Chicago Reader • StarTribune • Blavity • The Guardian • NBC New York's Bill's Books“One of the most frank and searing discussions on race ... a deeply serious, urgent book, which should take its place in the tradition of Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and King's Why We Can't Wait." ―The New York Times Book ReviewToni Morrison hails Tears We Cannot Stop as "Elegantly written and powerful in several areas: moving personal recollections; profound cultural analysis; and guidance for moral redemption. A work to relish." Stephen King says: "Here’s a sermon that’s as fierce as it is lucid…If you’re black, you’ll feel a spark of recognition in every paragraph. If you’re white, Dyson tells you what you need to know?what this white man needed to know, at least. This is a major achievement. I read it and said amen."Short, emotional, literary, powerful―Tears We Cannot Stop is the book that all Americans who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations will want to read.As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one man's voice soars above the rest with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop―a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted. "The time is at hand for reckoning with the past, recognizing the truth of the present, and moving together to redeem the nation for our future. If we don't act now, if you don't address race immediately, there very well may be no future."
In doing antiracism education there is a risk that it can in effect reinforce the very racialisation it is supposed to fight against. This paradox becomes a formidable challenge given the ubiquity of race in contemporary ways of knowing and ways of being for both its subjects and its objects: more so in an era of “racism without race,” a neoliberal attempt to move beyond racism without fully coming to terms with racial histories and their accompanying racialising consequences. This study examines the challenges of doing antiracism education within a multiculturalist framework using the case of KYTKE, a non-governmental organisation project in upper-secondary schools in Finland. We argue that when antiracism education fails to critically examine power relations in established traditions and knowledge or when it does not genuinely prioritise knowledge generated through the creative resistance of racialised groups, it can participate in re-inscribing racialised social relations.
The general democratic principle that police can intervene in the lives of citizens only under limited and carefully controlled circumstances (Marx, 2001) has significant implications for stop and search. As a coercive power, stop and search impinges on what the late Bernie Grant, former member of parliament for Haringey, described as the ‘fundamental right’ to ‘walk the streets’, raising important questions of liberty, fairness and equality (see NACRO, 1997: 3). Concerns about procedural justice focus on the quality of such encounters and the way negative experiences serve to undermine people’s trust and confidence in the police, potentially fuelling a more general sense of alienation (see Chapter 6). Distributive justice, on the other hand, concentrates on who it is that is stopped and searched, raising particular concerns about the disproportionate focus on black and minority ethnic groups and the potential for discrimination. Although stop and search operates at the shallow end of the criminal justice system, it has important knock-on effects, helping to define who gets caught in the net, driving ethnic disparities at later stages of the process (May et al., 2010; Eastwood et al., 2013). Potential inequalities and injustices in the use of stop and search, therefore, are important not just in and of themselves, but because of the way they reverberate throughout the system.
