Keeping Track Of Serious Crimes Against Foreigners

[bulmercke]

On the "idyllic" tropical island of Koh Samui EACH month there are on average three murders, three rapes, and eight violent assaults and these are just the reported cases.

For the month of May I think we would be shocked if a tally was kept of all-known crimes against foreigners for the whole of Thailand.

Check out Pattaya City News, Pattaya People, Pattaya Mail, Pattaya Today for any one week period and you'll see what I mean. Truly depressing.

However, the main stream media and the police try to do their best in surpressing details and info. about crimes against foreigners in this country.

Edited May 12, 2006 by bulmercke

[camerata]

If anyone's actually going to try and do this analysis, I'd say forget about getting figures from the police because there's no reason they would provide them. Also forget about using newspaper reports for several reasons: they aren't that reliable, they only report crimes interesting for their readership, they don't follow up many crimes for the years it may take for a court verdict.

One idea would be to start with simple stuff. Take three main visitor countries, say the UK, Germany and the US. For sure they will have at least the number of deaths of their nationals in Thailand each year publically available. Then compare those figures for the past 3 years against the number of those nationals visiting Thailand and resident in Thailand for the same period. That's doable with no special resources. Breakdown by type of death, rapes and violent crimes might be harder to find.

What you'll get from that is the trend of deaths for major farang-visitor countries compared to the number of them in-country - which might be interesting in itself. Then try breaking the deaths down according to whatever data is available. This way you don't have to deal with Thai authorities or newspaper reports and the data will be solid.

[SEAtramp]

Instead of waffling on here why don't you get started?

How are you going to accumulate this data by the way?

[Gary A]

It would be easy to gather data. Every country who has visitors to Thailand would require their citizens to report any crime directly to that countries embassy.

[jdinasia]

yeah ... right .... so the guy that gets mugged by a BG and her Thai BF runs straight to the Embassy and reports it ... (forgetting the wife and kids etc ....)

THEN the Embassy reports it to you ... and you compile the list and format it ... and put it online .... EazyPeazy

[SEAtramp]

It would be easy to gather data. Every country who has visitors to Thailand would require their citizens to report any crime directly to that countries embassy.

Right, and we all know that many visitors dont report petty crimes or even violent ones. So how are you going to gather the data?

[boppia]

All the best but Thailand doesn't care about foreigners. You can live here all your life and you will still be a 'farang' under the law. And Thai people won't support any laws to give you equal rights. This is the jungle where those who hold the sword survive.

But I'd love to see the statistics especially how many Thais go to jail for murdering a foreigner. What is the original meaning of farang? Sometimes I think it might mean dog.

[Prakanong2005]

GH, was you considering a 'reporting thread' here or keeping a private DB and publishing a report here or what?

I hadn't considered how yet, but I on first thoughts I think a Database with defined entry rules and a two part check (Person entering data and person checking entry)

Perhaps:

Name of Victim

Alternative Name 1, (Necessary due to spelling errors in press)

Gender of Victim

Age of Victim

Nationality of Victim

Alternative Nationality of Victim (Necessary due to dual nationals and reporting errors)

Description of Attack (Defined Attack Types)

Date of Attack

Location of Attack

Nationality of Attacker

Gender of Attacker

Arrest Made

Conviction Secured

That sort of thing.

Very good idea and good data fields

But

As a Data Management professional in a validated very regulated environment I can see a few flaws

Not intentional but just because of the nature of the beast.

Basically without naming them all but 1st hand (primary) source data is a non-starter?

How to monitor and verify?

Skewed data - many coming from the amateur reporters from the likes of PCN!

Edited June 11, 2006 by Prakanong2005

[thaigene2]

A lot of negativity here..

What makes you so sure the Toursit Police don't keep records? It's their job. Anyone thought of asking rather than griping?

I'll bet the foreign victims get a lot more attention from the authorities here than the Thai victims of violent crime. I'd be more interested in seeing stats on Thai victims of crime, more attention to autopsies (Porntip seems to think they do a pathetic job here), and then followed up with numbers of prosecutions, etc. then the whole thing weighted against averages of other countries.

Again even this may be available if anyone chooses to look. Don't wait for the Bangkok newspapers to do this. As the OP pointed out, they're good at initial reporting but then the story falls off the face of the earth..and no one seems to follow up on whether there are convictions except in really high profile cases like the two brits who were murdered by the cop or the girl raped and killed on the beach (that was solved a little too quickly and 'conveniently' for me).

Has anyone checked with UNODC in Thailand to see if they keep these stats and rankings? Maybe they do this every year?? A phone call would settle it..