210 responding figure in other provinces varied from 1.27 to 3.73,*- thus being only slightly higher than the Swedish homicide rates which Verkko ranks among the lowest in Europe in 1922-1926.*^ Hence, the Finnish nineteenth century violence was, above all. Southern Ostrobothnian violence; in general, elsewhere the homicide figures were not particularly high. Howis the level of violence to be related to the law of proof? Above, it has been suggested that the local courts felt pressured to “do something” about crime and did not, therefore, let the rigid rules of proof impede their activities. We might continue this line of argument and suppose that legal rules of proof, because they tend to render conviction more difficult than it would be if evidence were evaluated freely, are more likely to be abandoned when criminality rises. However, it seems that the connection between the level of criminality and judiciary’s willingness to hold on to the rules of proof is not so straightforward. First, should the transformation of evidence theories have been the judiciary’s response to the difficulties of crime control, the two phenomena ought to coincide timewise. In my material, however, the significant turn towards the free evaluation of evidence occurs only after the 1850s, whereas the level of violence had gone up considerably fromthe 1790s. In order for a connection to be established between the evidentiary theories and the levels of violence, the change in the theories of proof should, moreover, first have appeared in the practice of the hundred courts of Southern Ostrobothia and the High Court of Vasa. This is not the case, however; as to the increase in the use of free evaluation of evidence, no geographical pattern arises. Second, the existing research — by for example, Heikki Ylikangas - suggests that crime was not combatted in Southern Ostrobothnia by evaluating the often scarce evidence freely. On the contrary, the courts of the region often had difficulties in making convictions even in clear cases because eyewitnesses were customarily intimidated and refused to testify.*•♦ In other w'ords, very different kinds of pressures were directed at the local courts. If there were those who demanded that the court act, there were also those who aimed at rendering the court’s functioning more difficult. The amount of acquittals and unsolved homicide cases in Ylikangas’s study concerning the so-called knifefighters {puukkojunkkarit) in Ostrobothnia in 1790-1825 is convincing proof of that legal theory of proof showed no signs of vulnerabilityat that time inthe region,*5 in spite of the fact that the legal rules of proof seem at times to have Verkko 1949 p. 72. The homicide rates in Sweden in the nineteenth century varied from 0.61 to 1.47/100 000 persons/year, ibid. p. 53. Verkko gives no figures from other European countries for the nineteenth century. '■* Ylikangas 1976 (c) pp. 193-194, 210—217. According to Ylikangas, the High Court of Vaasa at times returned the case to the lower court to be re-examined, especially if many potential eyewitnesses had been present at the site of the crime. Ibid. p. 193.
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