No. of crimes involving foreigners in 2003 tops 40,000

[Poke-mon master]

Maciamo made a bad mistake to treat this statistics. I hope Maciamo did not do this intentionally. I check the number in the Japan National Police Agency, and found this crime number is only by short term foreign visiter, not residents. So like Korean, (700,000 Korean has a permanent residency,) crime committed by residents is not counted on this statistics. Therefore, crime rate by nationality will be a lot changed if there are many residents and crime by residents.

I hope Maciamo learned from this mistake, and will be a lot more careful when handling the number. Be responsible.

[Maciamo]

Maciamo made a bad mistake to treat this statistics. I hope Maciamo did not do this intentionally. I check the number in the Japan National Police Agency, and found this crime number is only by short term foreign visiter, not residents. So like Korean, (700,000 Korean has a permanent residency,) crime committed by residents is not counted on this statistics. Therefore, crime rate by nationality will be a lot changed if there are many residents and crime by residents.
I hope Maciamo learned from this mistake, and will be a lot more careful when handling the number. Be responsible.

Somebody else pointed that out, I double-checked this (last year), and the numbers I mentioned were for visitors and residents, except permanent residents. So I already changed the number of foreigners in my article (consider the forum as a draft) by taking the number of foreign visitors (JNTO stats) + the number of residents. There is no way that the police would make statistics for foreign visitors (on a 3 to 6 month visa) but not for residents on a 1 year or 3 year visa.

[Maciamo]

Sorry, I didn't that post 6 months ago...

From the more complete treatment in postings in this forum it's clear that the basic premise is right on and that the numbers do support what is said, so it's unfortunate that the article is so easily dismissable.

Why is it so important for you to try to dismiss my analysis as wrong or dishonest ? Don't you think that foreign tourists, business people and foreign residents who went to Japan because of their attraction for the country (I am talking mostly about Westerners) are obviously bound to commit less crimes than people who were born in Japan without choosing to be there ? What's more, as Japan is far away from most Western countries and relatively expensive, Westerners in Japan will usually belong to a higher socio-economic group than the Japanese average. And poverty does influence such crimes as theft, robbery or murder. I just cannot imagine why a Westerner in Japan would ever commit a robbery !

First, including visitors vastly inflates the number of foreigners, especially from Western countries that send a lot of tourists, thus driving down the crime rate.

My original article only took residents into account, but it Westerners (except Russians) already had clearly lower crime and offense rates than the Japanese.

Second, the "crimes" and "offenses" distinction is dubious. Not counting visa violations as crimes makes sense, especially for comparison with Japanese, who can't commit them. And speeding obviously doesn't count as a crime in many people's minds--look how many Japanese own radar detectors. However, drug use, weapons possession, and prostitution are questionable calls--just because I don't consider pot possession a big deal doesn't mean the Japanese have to agree with me.

The Japanese did the distinction themselves in the statistics. I didn't choose which is a crime and which is an offense.

I want to use the information in this article to counter Japanese people's stereotypes of foreigners as criminals--if I tell some guy in a bar that using drugs or carrying a gun isn't a crime, he's not going to take me seriously.

Maybe that's because too many English speakers use the word 'crime' too carelessly, even when mean 'offense'. It's a problem of language accuracy, not of being taken seriously. I wouldn't take seriously someone who thought of prostitution or drug use as a crime (maybe because I come from a fairly liberal soceity where both can be legal if done in the right place).

Not counting these offenses when comparing crimes is just begging to be ignored--any intelligent person is just going to say I'm discounting a large number of foreign crimes to order to fudge the numbers in my favor.

I don't understand what you are fussing about. The offense rate of Westerners in Japan is even lower than their crime rate (e.g. the crime rate of Americans in Japan is 0.016%, but their offense rate is only 0.006%, almost 3x lower). If I had wanted to fudge numbers, I would have merged crime and offense rates into a single "crime rate". I didn't by honesty and for the sake of statistical accuracy.

[Poke-mon master]

Somebody else pointed that out, I double-checked this (last year), and the numbers I mentioned were for visitors and residents, except permanent residents. So I already changed the number of foreigners in my article (consider the forum as a draft) by taking the number of foreign visitors (JNTO stats) + the number of residents. There is no way that the police would make statistics for foreign visitors (on a 3 to 6 month visa) but not for residents on a 1 year or 3 year visa.

Thanks for your response.
I think you still don't understand this statistics. The number of crime is only by visitors and residents but permanent residents, US military and illegal stowaways. So you should divide this crime number by the number of visitor and residents. Also if you want to talk about crime rate of foreigners, you should find the number of US army crime rate, illegal stowaways, and permanents residents. For your reference, in 2002, all number of crime and offense by foreigner is 32298, by visitor and residents is 22947, and by other type of foreigner is 9351. http://www.npa.go.jp/toukei/keiji4/hon419.pdf

I think you will agree if you ignore the 9351 of 32298, you cannot analyze crime rate by nationality in right way.

[Poke-mon master]

Somebody else pointed that out, I double-checked this (last year), and the numbers I mentioned were for visitors and residents, except permanent residents. So I already changed the number of foreigners in my article (consider the forum as a draft) by taking the number of foreign visitors (JNTO stats) + the number of residents. There is no way that the police would make statistics for foreign visitors (on a 3 to 6 month visa) but not for residents on a 1 year or 3 year visa.

Dear Maciamo:

I found newer statistics from NPA HP. http://www.npa.go.jp/toukei/keiji25/H16_27.pdf

It is 2 years old number, and include visiter and others both. I hope it will help you to make your article more accurate.

By the way, My idea about high foreign crime image is this. If US military committed the crime, Left wing people speak out loudly, and said "US military is BAD!", and when Chinese or Korean committed a crime, Right wing people speak out loudly, and said "NO Chinese and Korean!". Then many Japanese thought "Oh, there are many crime by foreigners."

[Maciamo]

As you mention the US military, I should say that they are not included in the police stats, as they have a special status outside the jurisdiction of the Japanese police. From what I read, it seems that their crime/offense rate is much higher than that or other US citizens in Japan.