Item — HN Reader

Finnish mental health legislation takes a medical approach to compulsory measures, emphasizing the need for treatment of psychiatric patients over civil liberties concerns... Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy.

If at the end of the 3-month period it is considered likely that detention criteria are still fulfilled, new recommendations MII and MIII are filed and the renewed detention is then valid for 6 months. However, this second period of detention has to be immediately confirmed by a local administrative court.

That's one part of the solution; whether it works is left as an exercise to the reader ..

2 comments

> Finland has the highest rates of detention per 100 000 inhabitants, about 214 compared with 93 in the UK and 11 in Italy.

Wow, now that is something I have not heard at all despite how frequently I've heard about the Finland housing first approach to drug addiction/homelessness. Thank you for the reading topic!

EDIT: Where did you get these numbers and what kind of detention do they refer to? I am not finding this 214/100k number anywhere. The prisoner population in Finland seems to be about 50/100k and the pre-trial detention rate is similar (unlike where I live where pre-trial accounts for 80% of detainees due to slow courts)

EDIT 2: Nevermind, I did find psychiatric holds, which I see to be reported as 150/100k which is certainly much much higher than other countries.

Psychiatric hold is a very, very different category from prison.

This is enlightening. Thank you.