|
Beware middle-aged drunks
26/03/2004 20:29 - (SA)
Helsinki - A Finnish government commission on domestic security concluded at a meeting on Friday that middle-aged male alcoholics pose the most serious threat to people living in the Nordic country, officials said.
"Because they cause accidents, carry out criminal acts or are victims of these often," Ritva Viljanen, a senior official at the interior ministry and chairperson of the commission, told AFP.
"Surveys show that violence is very much concentrated around middle-aged men with alcohol problems, who are somehow outside the society or have some sort of personal crisis behind them, like unemployment or divorce," she added.
The government-appointed expert group reached its conclusions at a seminar in Helsinki on Friday, and a more extensive report on the issue will be available later this summer, Viljanen said.
Due to the abundance of drunk middle-aged men in Finland, the country has - in proportion to population - two to three times as many serious crimes, such as homicides, as the average in the European Union, she said.
Every year, 100 people on average are killed in Finland, Viljanen added.
Accidents in private homes or during leisure activities, also frequently in connection with alcohol consumption, pose the second largest threat to Finland's domestic security, the group concluded, adding that abuse of illegal drugs came in third.
A separate government report on terrorism recently concluded that it was highly unlikely that acts of international terrorism would take place in non-aligned Finland.
The Finnish population of 5.3 million is among the most homogenous in the world, with just some 100 000 immigrants, mostly from Europe.
- AFP
|
South Africa
