Finland will jail men who send unsolicited 'd**k pics' under new proposals

Men who send unsolicited 'd**k pics' could be jailed for up to six months under new laws being proposed in Finland.

Ministers want to amend the country's sexual harassment laws to include sending explicit images, along with verbal and text harassment.

Under current Finnish law, an offense is only considered to be sexual harassment if it involves physical touching.

Finnish lawmakers want to jail men who send unsolicited 'd**k pics' for up to six months under changes to the country's sexual harassment laws (file image)

Some offenders who send explicit photos have been prosecuted under the country's defamation laws.

However, campaigners have been asking for the law to be changed because it does not take into account the sexual nature of the crime.

Sami Kiriakos, from Finland's justice ministry, said the new law could be submitted 'some time next year' before being put before parliament for a vote.

Research has shown that online sexual harassment is widespread, including the sending of non-consensual sexual images, sometimes known 'cyber-flashing.'

A study this year by children's rights charity Plan International found that 51 percent of 14,000 girls and young women surveyed worldwide had experienced sexual harassment online.

Some 35 percent of the surveyed 15- to 25-year-olds had received 'sexual or explicit photos or images,' the research said.

Current laws require physical touching for an offense to be sexual harassment, but new laws would include harassment via speech, text and photographs (file image)

'The studies based on questionnaires show that sexual harassment is quite common and that the victims of this type of behaviour are most often female, so it is very relevant to consider how it should be dealt with in law,' Kiriakos said.

Some territories have taken steps to ban online sexual harassment, including Scotland which outlawed the behaviour in 2010.

The US state of Texas last year introduced a $500 (£380) fine for sending unsolicited sexual images.

However many other countries have been slow to criminalise online flashing, which can prove difficult to enforce.

'These types of offences, or virtually anything that occurs on the web, may be very difficult to investigate,' Kiriakos said.

But 'investigative authorities do have coercive measures which apply to sexual offences if certain conditions are met, such as access to telecommunications data,' he added.

The proposal is part of a wide-ranging redrafting of Finnish sexual offences legislation which would also see the legal definition of rape changed.

Current law means that violence or the threat of violence must be used to be used to qualify as rape, while the new laws would define it as 'sex without consent'.