Criminal records

What kind of information is saved in criminal records?

A criminal record contains the following judgments:

• Unconditional imprisonment and conditional imprisonment

• Monitoring sentence

• Conditional imprisonment, plus fine (supplementary fine), community service or monitoring

• Community service instead of unconditional imprisonment

• Juvenile penalty, or fine instead of juvenile penalty

• Dismissal

• Punishment waived due to criminal irresponsibility

Only these fines and conversion sentences for unpaid fines are saved in the criminal records.

Imprisonments sentenced under the Non-Military Service Act [siviilipalveluslaki] or the Conscription Act [asevelvollisuuslaki] are not held in the records.

Corporate fines imposed on legal entities (company, foundation etc.) are held in the criminal records.

Criminal records also contain information about sentences given abroad to Finnish nationals or people who do not have Finnish citizenship but who live here permanently, if the sanctions correspond to the sentences that would be held in the Finnish criminal records according to the list given above.

The records include information about whether the offender has served the punishment or pardoned.

When is information removed from the criminal records?

Personal information is removed from the records at different times, depending on how severe the punishment is.

5 years after the date when the judgment became final, all information is removed about:

• Conditional imprisonment

• Conditional imprisonment, plus fine (supplementary fine), community service or monitoring

• Juvenile penalty, or fine instead of juvenile penalty

• Dismissal

• Corporate fine

10 years after the date when the judgment became final, all information is removed about:

• Unconditional imprisonment of up to two years

• Community service given instead of an unconditional sentence

20 years after the date when the judgment became final, all information is removed about:

• Unconditional imprisonment of more than two years and up to five years

• Punishment waived due to criminal irresponsibility

After a person’s death or at the age of 90, all information is removed about:

• Imprisonment of more than five years. If the criminal records still contain information about the person, all of the remaining information will be removed at this point.

Information on an individual punishment is not removed if the criminal records contain information that cannot yet be removed on the grounds of the above rules being applicable to the decision.

If a person commits new offences before the previous entry in the criminal records has been removed, all of the information is kept until the write-off period of the most severe sentence has expired.