Firearm Murders 20k Pa? '98 To '00

[A_Traveller]

In a thread yesterday which became problematic {understatements R' us} reference was made to series of statistics {link below} which suggested that Thailand's murder rate by firearms was in excess of 20,000 pa {98 to 00} which evaluates to 54+ a day!

Does anyone have any input on this, are these figures realistic? There's something bizarre here surely, apart from the 'fact' that every crime appears to be 'solved?'. see note below:-

1998 numbers from source as example.

Total recorded intentional homicide, completed -- 5717

Total recorded intentional homicide, attempted -- 4777

Total recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm -- 23631

Total recorded non-intentional homicides -- 277

Total recorded assaults -- 17852 {less then murders?}

Total recorded rapes -- 3516

Total recorded robberies -- 1060 {pardon?}

Total recorded thefts -- 58184

Total recorded automobile theft -- 3833

Total recorded burglaries --13784

Total recorded frauds -- 6468

Total recorded embezzlements -- 13824

Total recorded drug offenses -- 225252

Total recorded bribery crimes -- 268 { }

Total - all persons brought into initial formal contact 218304 {Hum.... ?}

There then follows the same criteria with exactly the same numbers as "criteria suspects" which should give a figure nearer 370k, shouldn't it?

Anyone have any views, data, thoughts to add to this?

Regards

Link

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_seventh.html

The data is available as a PDF or as an XLS file.

[soundman]

In a thread yesterday which became problematic {understatements R' us} reference was made to series of statistics {link below} which suggested that Thailand's murder rate by firearms was in excess of 20,000 pa {98 to 00} which evaluates to 54+ a day!

Does anyone have any input on this, are these figures realistic? There's something bizarre here surely, apart from the 'fact' that every crime appears to be 'solved?'. see note below:-

1998 numbers from source as example.

Total recorded intentional homicide, completed -- 5717

Total recorded intentional homicide, attempted -- 4777

Total recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm -- 23631

Total recorded non-intentional homicides -- 277

Total recorded assaults -- 17852 {less then murders?}

Total recorded rapes -- 3516

Total recorded robberies -- 1060 {pardon?}

Total recorded thefts -- 58184

Total recorded automobile theft -- 3833

Total recorded burglaries --13784

Total recorded frauds -- 6468

Total recorded embezzlements -- 13824

Total recorded drug offenses -- 225252

Total recorded bribery crimes -- 268 { }

Total - all persons brought into initial formal contact 218304 {Hum.... ?}

There then follows the same criteria with exactly the same numbers as "criteria suspects" which should give a figure nearer 370k, shouldn't it?

Anyone have any views, data, thoughts to add to this?

Regards

Link

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_seventh.html

The data is available as a PDF or as an XLS file.

Read the thai newspapers. Any death from shooting usually makes the front page. I count maybe a couple evey two weeks.

As to those websites, I visited one linked in a previous post listing yearly killings.

At the top was a banner procalaiming Venezuela to be the most murderous place on earth, however, it didn't even list in the rankings of homicides per year. Credibility problem there.

I think you will find these web sites are created for web hits & advertising revenue.

So to answer your question. 54 killings per day. Absolute BS.

Soundman.

Edited April 5, 2007 by soundman

[A_Traveller]

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_seventh.html

The data is available as a PDF or as an XLS file.

Read the thai newspapers. Any death usually makes the front page. I count maybe a couple evey two weeks.

As to those websites, I visited one linked in a previous post listing yearly killings.

At the top was a banner procalaiming Venezuela to be the most murderous place on earth, however, it didn't even list in the rankings of homicides per year. Credibility problem there.

I think you will find these web sites are created for web hits & advertising revenue.

So to answer your question. 54 killings per day. Absolute BS.

Soundman.

Understand and my instinct is to agree, however this source data site is the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, hence my puzzlement.

Regards

Edited April 5, 2007 by A_Traveller

[lannarebirth]

Don't know about firearms, but I came across 2 Thai men going at each other with 10"-12" knives today. Both had already been badly cut , were bleeding profusely and they still had bloodlust in their eyes. At least one is likely dead now. So yeah, tragic mindless violence happens here, and a lot more than we ever hear about.

[ZZZ]

Something must have been lost in the translation. There were 5135 murders year 2000 and 20,001 crimes involving an offensive weapon.

http://www.thai-info2004.com/crime_in_thailand.htm

[Khonwan]

Read the thai newspapers. Any death from shooting usually makes the front page. I count maybe a couple evey two weeks.

As to those websites, I visited one linked in a previous post listing yearly killings.

At the top was a banner procalaiming Venezuela to be the most murderous place on earth, however, it didn't even list in the rankings of homicides per year. Credibility problem there.

I think you will find these web sites are created for web hits & advertising revenue.

So to answer your question. 54 killings per day. Absolute BS.

Soundman.

There are countless killings in Thailand that are never reported by the media. I recently lost two good friends (our family doctor plus our neighbouring village headman) shot dead within 6 month of each other. Neither case was reported by the media. I also know that many of my village friends have killed at least once in their life (and were not caught).

Rgds

Khonwan

[Thaddeus]

Just up the road from me there is a line of karaoke bars, about 10 of them.

Over the last two years I have gone from.

"oh dear, how sad, why?"

to

"what!, again"

to

"ah well, never mind"

Weapons have ranged from knives to guns and tree branches, even boots similar to Doc Martins have featured.

None of these incidents will ever be reported in the press and therefore you can't use the papers as anything like an accurate measure of violence...... if the figures come from hospital records however.

[ColPyat]

Read the thai newspapers. Any death from shooting usually makes the front page. I count maybe a couple evey two weeks.

As to those websites, I visited one linked in a previous post listing yearly killings.

At the top was a banner procalaiming Venezuela to be the most murderous place on earth, however, it didn't even list in the rankings of homicides per year. Credibility problem there.

I think you will find these web sites are created for web hits & advertising revenue.

So to answer your question. 54 killings per day. Absolute BS.

Soundman.

Actually, no.

Killings make it only into the papers when reporters were present at the crime scene, and if it is just a normal shooting it rarely makes the front page. I have even been at some very gruesome crime scenes which made it only into the 3rd or 4th page (and never into the English language papers), and many i have seen in the more distant suburbs never made it into the papers, especially when the victim died in the hospital where photos are not possible and only text could be sold.

Upcountry killings have even less chance to make it into the papers. Thai newspapers pay only about 1000 Baht for photo plus text (400 Baht for the photo alone) to their stringers. At every crime scene a stringer has to calculate petrol costs vs. possible income. A normal shooting in a out of the way village that has little chance to make it into the papers, where petrol costs easily reach 300 Baht or more, will not be covered.

Even down south, where Thai reporters do make some real money (for Thailand), incidents where just one person was shot will not be covered if it is far from the main cities. Petrol cost would easily eat up the income), and is not worth the often extreme danger.

Outside of proper Bangkok most Thai papers only have stringers and freelancers, who work on a per piece base, and not on a monthly salary. Their income is about 10 000 Baht a month. They have to calculate at every crime scene if it is worth going.

From personal experience, purely empirical, i do not doubt for a second the number presented here.

[farang prince]

Read the thai newspapers. Any death from shooting usually makes the front page. I count maybe a couple evey two weeks.

As to those websites, I visited one linked in a previous post listing yearly killings.

At the top was a banner procalaiming Venezuela to be the most murderous place on earth, however, it didn't even list in the rankings of homicides per year. Credibility problem there.

I think you will find these web sites are created for web hits & advertising revenue.

So to answer your question. 54 killings per day. Absolute BS.

Soundman.

Actually, no.

Killings make it only into the papers when reporters were present at the crime scene, and if it is just a normal shooting it rarely makes the front page. I have even been at some very gruesome crime scenes which made it only into the 3rd or 4th page (and never into the English language papers), and many i have seen in the more distant suburbs never made it into the papers, especially when the victim died in the hospital where photos are not possible and only text could be sold.

Upcountry killings have even less chance to make it into the papers. Thai newspapers pay only about 1000 Baht for photo plus text (400 Baht for the photo alone) to their stringers. At every crime scene a stringer has to calculate petrol costs vs. possible income. A normal shooting in a out of the way village that has little chance to make it into the papers, where petrol costs easily reach 300 Baht or more, will not be covered.

Even down south, where Thai reporters do make some real money (for Thailand), incidents where just one person was shot will not be covered if it is far from the main cities. Petrol cost would easily eat up the income), and is not worth the often extreme danger.

Outside of proper Bangkok most Thai papers only have stringers and freelancers, who work on a per piece base, and not on a monthly salary. Their income is about 10 000 Baht a month. They have to calculate at every crime scene if it is worth going.

From personal experience, purely empirical, i do not doubt for a second the number presented here.

I can't comment on the accuracy of these statistics, simply because I don't have access to the original offense reports. The U.N. has been keeping crime statistics for years and I have often questioned some of the totals for different countries. Perhaps the underlying issue is whether there is confusion about the reporting forms being used by the United Nations. As we all know, a lot can be lost in the translation.

[lomatopo]

We've hashed these figures countless times in at least a dozen threads. The general concensus is that the "Murder by Firearm" figures for Thailand, and a few other countries, are not accurate. We generally accepted the total "Murder" figure of ~ 5,700+ and swagged the firearm figure at closer to 3,000.

Not sure what math might be being used but 1998, 1999, 2000 are three years, so 23,631 of something spread over three years would be ~ 21 1/2 per day, and even that figure would make it hard for anyone to get any sleep with all those guns being fired.

Edited April 6, 2007 by lomatopo

[ColPyat]

We generally accepted the total "Murder" figure of ~ 5,700+ and swagged the firearm figure at closer to 3,000.

And how did you get to that number, on what statistic is it based? Sources?

[LaoPo]

Anyone have any views, data, thoughts to add to this?

Link

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_seventh.html

The data is available as a PDF or as an XLS file.

Mistakes have been made in these statistics!

Here:

Murders: 5,140

Murders (per capita): 0.0800798 per 1,000 people

Murders with firearms: 20,032

Murders with firearms (per capita): 0.312093 per 1,000 people

If you look at the total murders and murders/per capita you will see the mistake

There was a comment of a Lady who found the mistake; look at the "Commentary" in the link (on the bottom) here:

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/th-thailand/cri-crime

LaoPo

[ColPyat]

If you look at the total murders and murders/per capita you will see the mistake

At first this baffled me as well. The only possible logic explanation would be that the 'Murders' category excludes the ones by firearms, which then are listed separate under 'Murders with firearms'.

[Jimjim]

Or a logical explanation is that it's wrong.

The thai-info2004 site seems to clear it up saying there were about 20,000 arrests for "offensive weapons" under the category of victimless crimes. So, I assume that means firearms, etc.

The statistics are old to begin with, from 2000 at most recent, and that thai--info2004 site has not been updated lately either, it appears. But that hasn't got much to do with it.

[PeaceBlondie]

A former poster named davidbkk wrote, "There are no statistics in Thailand." By that, I think he meant that in his years of doing documentaries in Thailand, he never found a reliable source that was clearly shown to be statistically accurate. That starts with the population itself. Are there 63 million Thais? Could there be 50 million or 75 million? How would we know, and what does it matter? Does Thai culture have the same morbid fascination with numbers, accurate to four significant digits, that Western culture has?

We usually don't know, exactly. Some times, we barely have a clue. It doesn't matter half as much as we bpen rai think it matters.

[mosquitoman]

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

Evan Esar, American Humorist (1899 - 1995)

MM

[ColPyat]

A former poster named davidbkk wrote, "There are no statistics in Thailand." By that, I think he meant that in his years of doing documentaries in Thailand, he never found a reliable source that was clearly shown to be statistically accurate. That starts with the population itself. Are there 63 million Thais? Could there be 50 million or 75 million? How would we know, and what does it matter? Does Thai culture have the same morbid fascination with numbers, accurate to four significant digits, that Western culture has?

We usually don't know, exactly. Some times, we barely have a clue. It doesn't matter half as much as we bpen rai think it matters.

I would tend to agree that there are very little reliable statistics in Thailand. The problem is that when ever one says that Thailand is a very violent society, and tries to communicate it by personal experience one is shot down, and asked to provide statistical background. Well, at least this is a statistic that confirms personal experience which otherwise is doubted by many romantically challenged here.

Does it matter that there is a lack of reliable statistics here? You bet it does. In a modern country, and less modern countries as well, you need reliable figures in order to allocate budgets to where they are needed, and not just into the the pockets of the powerful, as is endemic here.

You need numbers and figures in order to work out policies, something that mostly is replaced here by ideological BS.

[wilko]

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Edited April 17, 2007 by wilko

[mosquitoman]

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

Joseph Stalin

Georgian Soviet politician (1879 - 1953)

MM

[pampal]

There is violence in Thailand, just like any other country.

But it all comes down to how safe you feel when you go outside.

I challenge anyone to walk in downtown Los Angeles at 1 AM and do the same in Bangkok and then decide.

If you are still alive that is

Edited April 17, 2007 by pampal