Index: lib/Mail/SpamAssassin/PerMsgStatus.pm
===================================================================
--- lib/Mail/SpamAssassin/PerMsgStatus.pm	(revision 588211)
+++ lib/Mail/SpamAssassin/PerMsgStatus.pm	(working copy)
@@ -665,22 +665,46 @@
   # This is the new message.
   my $newmsg = '';
 
+  # the SpamAssassin report
+  my $report = $self->get_report();
+
   # the report charset
-  my $report_charset = "; charset=iso-8859-1";
+  my $report_charset = 'iso-8859-1';
   if ($self->{conf}->{report_charset}) {
-    $report_charset = "; charset=" . $self->{conf}->{report_charset};
+    $report_charset = $self->{conf}->{report_charset};
   }
 
-  # the SpamAssassin report
-  my $report = $self->get_report();
-
   # If there are any wide characters, need to MIME-encode in UTF-8
-  # TODO: If $report_charset is something other than iso-8859-1/us-ascii, then
-  # we could try converting to that charset if possible
-  unless ($] < 5.008 || utf8::downgrade($report, 1)) {
-      $report_charset = "; charset=utf-8";
-      utf8::encode($report);
+  unless ($] < 5.008) {
+    use Encode;
+    my $charset_is_utf8 = 0;
+    if ($self->{conf}->{normalize_charset}) {
+      $report = Encode::decode('utf8',$report) unless (Encode::is_utf8($report));
+      $charset_is_utf8 = 1;
+    }
+    else {
+      if ($self->{msg}->{charset}) {
+        eval {
+          my $scratch = $report;
+          $report = Encode::decode($self->{msg}->{charset},$scratch,Encode::FB_CROAK);
+          $charset_is_utf8 = 1;
+        };
+      }
+    }
+    if ($charset_is_utf8) {
+      $charset_is_utf8 = 1;
+      eval {
+        my $scratch = $report;
+        $report = Encode::encode($report_charset,$scratch,Encode::FB_CROAK);
+        $charset_is_utf8 = 0;
+      };
+      if ($charset_is_utf8) {
+        $report = Encode::encode('utf8',$report);
+        $report_charset = 'utf-8';
+      }
+    }
   }
+  my $report_charset_param = "; charset=" . $report_charset;
 
   # get original headers, "pristine" if we can do it
   my $from = $self->{msg}->get_pristine_header("From");
@@ -798,7 +822,7 @@
 This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
 
 --$boundary
-Content-Type: text/plain$report_charset
+Content-Type: text/plain$report_charset_param
 Content-Disposition: inline
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit