Violence in Cambodia is at a historic low

After documenting 150 years of homicide, researchers have found Cambodia’s current regime has reduced violence to historic lows. But will the peace last?

The National Archives building in Phnom Penh is a peaceful place. There are usually few people and it’s always library quiet. The checkerboard floor tiles and tall ceilings keep the air cool naturally.

It was in this tranquil atmosphere that criminology academics Brigitte and Thierry Bouhours, with their colleague Rod Broadhurst, spent many long hours poring over musty documents searching for death, murder and mayhem as they researched the history of crime and violence in Cambodia.

Going back 150 years, the trio tracked trends in the annual death tolls – excluding acts of war – and put them in the context of socio-political events for a book to be released later this year titled Violence and the Civilising Process in Cambodia. And, surprisingly perhaps, they have found that violence in Cambodia has fallen to historic lows.

The Bouhours, a married couple from France who moved in the early 1980s to Australia where they studied criminology, first met Broadhurst, an academic with the Australian National University, in 2006.

read this excellent documented long analysis here: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/history-violence