Finnish police > General principles of operation > Police rights > Protecting domestic premises

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Protecting domestic premises

The police are responsible for protecting what is known as domestic peace. This means they have the right, on the request of the owner of a home or equivalent place, to remove a person who violates this domestic peace. The Finnish concept of domestic premises applies not only to residential premises but also to business premises, offices, hospitals, schools and other similar institutions and their grounds.

Breaches of domestic peace typically include the following:

• a person enters somebody's home and refuses to leave
• an invited guest starts behaving in a manner which the hosts consider inappropriate and refuses to leave when requested
• an occupant in a block of flats creates such a noise at night that other occupants cannot sleep properly
• a customer creating a disturbance in commercial premises or offices refuses to leave when requested by the staff.

The police have the right to remove a person disturbing others from domestic premises. If it is likely that the person removed will soon return to cause a further disturbance, the police have the right to apprehend the person causing the disturbance and keep him/her in custody for up to 12 hours after being apprehended.

Sorting out ordinary domestic disputes does not fall within the purview of police duties, but if violence or a threat of violence is involved, the police may, under the provisions on domestic premises, remove the violent family member from his/her home to calm down.

The police are not authorized to evict anyone. This falls under the purview of the debt recovery authorities, which may in certain cases laid down by law request help from the police to carry out the eviction.

The police may themselves sometimes have to perform a breach of domestic peace in sudden dangerous situations. The law entitles the police to enter domestic premises if there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an event is in progress that is endangering human lives, health, property or the environment.



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