What are the prosecution and conviction outcomes for sexual offences in Finland by offence subcategory (rape vs sexual harassment) for 2022–2024?
Executive summary
Reported sexual offences in Finland rose sharply after the 2023 consent‑based reform, with official counts showing notable increases in 2023 and into early 2024 and authorities reporting more solved rape cases and more sentences for sexual offences in 2023; however, granular prosecution‑to‑conviction flows by offence subcategory (rape versus sexual harassment) for 2022–2024 are only partially available in public releases, limiting definitive rate calculations [1][2][3][4].
1. Reported filings and legal change: a surge in reported sexual offences
Official statistics document a marked rise in recorded sexual offences after the new sexual offences legislation came into force in 2023: preliminary tables show a 20.5–29.6 percent increase in reported sexual offences for 2023 depending on the reference period, with Statistics Finland reporting 611 rapes in January–June 2023 and slightly over 1,000 rapes in January–September 2023 under the new law [1][2]; Statistics Finland also recorded a 22 percent growth in recorded offences in January–March 2024 compared with the prior year [5].
2. Rape: investigations, solved cases and convictions through 2023
The number of rape offences classified as “solved” rose through 2023, with Statista’s compilation of Statistics Finland data showing 990 solved rape offences in 2023 compared with lower counts a decade earlier, indicating investigators are clarifying more cases to the point of bringing charges or trials [6][3]; earlier baseline reporting shows thousands of sexual‑offence reports in 2022 (5,538 reported sexual offences in 2022 is cited in one source), but direct one‑to‑one statistics on prosecutions initiated and convictions secured for rape specifically in 2022–2024 are not consistently published in the available releases [7][6].
3. Sexual harassment: reclassification, reporting share and local patterns
The broadened offence definitions under the 2023 reform expanded sexual harassment to include a wider range of sexual acts, and local police reporting shows sexual harassment accounted for 22 percent of all sexual offences in Helsinki in 2024, with 251 reports to the Helsinki police that year—about double the 2022 figure for that jurisdiction—reflecting both legal reclassification and increased reporting [8]; however, nationwide prosecution and conviction tallies disaggregated to the harassment subcategory are not provided in detail in the cited national statistics releases [8][9].
4. Convictions and sentences: overall rise but limited subcategory detail
Statistics Finland published that the number of sentences for sexual offences in 2023 was 33 percent higher than a year earlier, and the overall number of criminal convictions at first instance in 2023 was 51,856—one percent more than in 2022—indicating a rise in judicial outcomes for sexual offences as a group in 2023 [4]; the StatFin database and derived charts also show the number of solved sexual crimes reached 3,631 in 2023, suggesting more cases are reaching a prosecutable stage [3]. What the official releases do not clearly publish in the sources provided is a year‑by‑year breakdown showing how many prosecutions were opened and how many convictions were obtained specifically for rape versus sexual harassment for 2022, 2023 and 2024, so precise conviction rates by subcategory cannot be calculated from the available documents [9][4].
5. Methodological limitations and interpretive caveats
Public datasets and summaries emphasize reported offences, “solved” cases (meaning circumstances clarified for charges or trial) and aggregate sentences, but they leave gaps on prosecution case counts and final conviction counts by offence subcategory for each year 2022–2024; independent compilations and secondary summaries (including media and encyclopedic pages) attempt to fill those gaps but mix preliminary data and local figures, so any definitive prosecution→conviction percentages by subcategory would require direct extraction from the StatFin case‑level tables or prosecutor‑level publications not provided here [3][9].
6. Bottom line
Official Finnish data confirm a substantial rise in recorded sexual offences after the 2023 legal reform, a notable increase in solved rape cases and a 33 percent increase in sentences for sexual offences in 2023, while sexual harassment became a larger share of recorded offences in 2024 in Helsinki; however, the specific prosecution and conviction outcomes broken down cleanly into rape versus sexual harassment for 2022–2024 are not fully available in the cited sources, so precise subcategory conviction rates cannot be stated without further access to StatFin’s disaggregated prosecution and sentencing tables or prosecutor‑level statistics [1][2][6][4][8].