Crime Prevention in Thailand
Sumonthip chitsawang.et.al
The research titled "Role of Local Government Organizations in Crime Prevention" aims to study the role, problem, obstacle and guideline or appropriate form of local government organization to prevent crime. It is the combination of quantitative and qualitative research. The Sampling group is randomly selected one from each province; consisting of 76 provincial administrative organizations, 76 sub-district administrative organizations, 76 municipalities and municipalities, 30 municipalities and special local government organizations (Bangkok Metropolitan and Pattaya City), thus there are 260 samples in total. For the qualitative samples, 19 local organizations with the Good Practices of crime prevention practices are selected. In terms of research methodology, the quantitative research uses Percentage, Mean and Standard Deviation, whereas the qualitative research used Content Analysis.
The results of the study show that the local government organizations have the role and importance to crime prevention under the 6 crime prevention frameworks as follows; 1. the role of crime prevention by public participation under the sub-district charter, self-governed sub-district, merit bank, beer-free city, sorrow-fixing and happiness-generating community by community justice to reduce conflict and create community harmony as well as manage sustainable environment to prevent environmental crime and encourage people to volunteering in crime prevention 2. the role in crime prevention by monitoring risky groups that may cause crime especially by monitoring and assisting vulnerable groups in the underprivileged, career development, community welfare, educational training, treatment of drug-related group, and prevention of children and youth e.g. care of children development at all ages, promote the Children Council, classify children in the community and monitor with appropriate support and action, and provide rehabilitation and improvement of the quality of life for the marginalized youth in urban society 3. the role of crime prevention through recidivism prevention consisted of probation cooperation, vocational training for inmates, job provision for released prisoners, social acceptance, stigmatization for those who have been imprisoned in prison reduction 4. the role of crime prevention led by environment and technology factors e.g. urban planning, CCTV usage, electric light installation, landscape design that reduce risky area, patrolling 5. The role of crime prevention by reducing victimization by using Community Crime Volunteers, establishment of a center for domestic violence or crime against children, youth and women, build a community network to monitor and help victims, training Public Relation for Prevention of victimization and 6. the role in the development and enhancement of personnel in crime prevention by creating awareness, training, welfare and morale among officers.
Crucial problems and obstacles of crime prevention is misunderstanding of crime prevention because it is understood the meaning is similar to crime repression. It is therefore seen that roles in crime prevention are not primary and the law does not provide authority to prevent crime. There is also the problem of being stigmatized by society, political issues at the national level, and the inspection organization is not conducive to the role in crime prevention. The important suggestion is to promote the role of local government organizations in crime prevention. The knowledge about crime prevention to local administrative organizations should instead be provided. The agency responsible for monitoring should be flexible and facilitative in its role in crime prevention, and given incentives for workers in local government organizations related to crime prevention.
