The aim of this research is to examine what the police in Finland are doing to combat antisemitic hate crimes, compared to Sweden and Great Britain? When the countries’ strategies are compared with each other and analysed within a created theoretical frame, it is possible to see what the Finnish police have planned to do and what could be improved compared to Sweden, Great Britain and the theoretical frame. This research was done using public sources, which means that countries’ materials come from open sources; the research does not contain information from confidential sources and no interviews were conducted.
The first phase of comparison was to create a theoretical frame for comparison. This was done by identifying five key areas for policing antisemitic hate crimes and hate crimes in general from previous research. These key areas are trust, education, initial investigation actions, statistics, and policies. After this phase, five actions were identified that are recommended for police to take concerning each key area according to involved actors. These actions were taken from materials written by both Jewish, and non-Jewish organizations and police organizations. Then four strategic documents were chosen and analysed from each country. The documents were as similar as possible from all three countries containing both local and national strategic levels. Additionally, information from other official sources was taken into the comparison if the information was important in order to gain a more realistic picture of actions taken by the country. Strategic documents were researched by using content analysis concentrating on counteractions by the police.
Once the comparison was made, it could be seen that Great Britain had planned to take more actions than Sweden or Finland. Sweden had planned to take more actions than Finland. This means that Finland can improve its effort to combat antisemitic hate crimes and is not yet at the same strategic level as Great Britain and Sweden in this matter. This research did not examine how and whether the actions are truly implemented. Instead, the results are based on the created theoretical frame and the perception that a citizen receives when reading strategic documents and wanting to learn what the police are doing to counteract antisemitic hate crimes. If the police in Finland want to put more effort in combatting antisemitic hate crimes, this research is a useful tool and gives ideas as to what could be done and what Sweden and Great Britain have already planned to do.
Source: doria
