How have rates of reported sexual offences in Finland changed since the 2023 legal reform?

1. What changed in law and why that matters for the numbers

The 2023 reform recast Finnish sexual‑offence law from a coercion/violence model to a consent‑based framework, broadening the definition of rape and creating new offences such as non‑consensual dissemination of sexual images and wider categories of sexual harassment, and it explicitly strengthened protection of children — changes that were intended to prioritize sexual self‑determination and personal integrity and that also expanded the scope of reportable crimes ^{[1] [2] [6]}.

2. The headline numbers since the reform

Official and media reporting shows a clear increase in recorded sexual offences from 2023 onward: Statistics Finland’s releases for 2023 recorded sizeable rises in reported sexual crimes (for instance a 29.6% increase in 2023 cited by the Helsinki Times summary of official figures) and quarterly releases reported 23% growth through September 2023 and about 20–22% increases in other measured periods; Helsinki Police data tell a similar story locally, with sexual‑offence reports rising over 50% in two years and rape reports up by 68% in the same window ^{[2] [3] [7] [8] [4] [5]}.

3. How much of the rise reflects law and definitions versus incidence

Statistics producers and police explicitly caution that the rise was expected and partly driven by the law change — direct historical comparisons are valid only from 2023 onwards because many acts that were not previously classified as sexual offences became so under the new code, and new categories (online image offences, broader harassment) were added, which inflates recorded counts even if underlying behaviour did not increase ^{[5] [2] [1]}.

4. Signals from prosecutions and convictions

Beyond reports, recorded criminal justice outcomes also shifted: Statistics Finland reported that the number of sentences for sexual offences was 33% higher in 2023 than the year before, indicating that more cases reached courts and produced convictions or punishments — a datapoint that supports the view that the system is processing larger caseloads, though it does not by itself parse victimization trends from definitional or reporting changes ^[9].

5. Alternative explanations and expert caveats

Analysts point to multiple, non‑exclusive drivers of rising police figures: legal reclassification and new offence types; greater public awareness and willingness to report after reform and campaigning; improved detection and recording by authorities; and longer‑term upward trends in recorded sexual crimes going back years (data show a long‑term rise in police‑recorded sexual assaults over decades), meaning a post‑reform spike sits atop an existing upward trajectory — experts therefore urge caution in equating recorded rates with actual incidence without complementary victim‑survey data and careful methodological adjustments ^{[10] [11] [2] [12]}.

6. What remains uncertain or under‑reported

Public sources do not yet settle whether the true prevalence of sexual offending rose, fell, or stayed constant after 2023 because victimization surveys, detection rates, reporting propensity, and legal classification all moved at once; official releases and police statements acknowledge this limitation and recommend using 2023 as the baseline for future comparisons rather than comparing to pre‑2023 years ^{[5] [2] [7]}.

7. Bottom line for interpreting the change

The empirical fact: recorded reports and court sentences for sexual offences in Finland increased substantially following the 2023 reform and remained elevated into 2024 and 2025 in official summaries and local police data ^{[2] [3] [8] [4] [9]}. The interpretive caution: much — and possibly most — of that increase reflects broadened legal definitions, new criminal categories, and changes in reporting and recording practices, so rising rates of recorded offences do not by themselves prove a commensurate rise in actual incidence ^{[1] [5] [10]}.