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Highest rate of crimes/offences per country
Having a look at the statistics above, the highest rate of criminals and offenders combined by nationality is found respectively among Russians (0.871%), Chinese (0.860%), Thais (0.530%), Brazilians (0.428%) and Philippinos (0.409%). Considering continents, the highest crime and offence rate is however held by the Africans (0.954%).
The Japanese crime rate is 0.340%, which is similar to the Asian average of 0.314%, but about 10 times higher than that of Western countries, with Oceanians at 0.0044%, Europeans at 0.042% and North Americans at 0.029%.
The Koreans have the lowest crime and offence rate (0.086%) of any non-Western country, which is worth mentioning as they are the single largest group of foreigners in Japan, accounting for 1/3 of all foreign residents.
Highest rate of crimes only per country
If we omit the offences, as most of them are visa-related and cannot compare to Japanese rates. Offences include all violations of the law that do not cause any harm to other people, such as getting a parking ticket or consuming alcohol under the legal age.
If we concentrate on real crimes, we find a completely different ranking though. Iranians, Russians or Philippinos have been arrested for a much higher number of offences than crimes, for instance. We also see that Brazilians and Japanese were arrested for proportionally more crimes than offences. Here is the real crime rate :
Chinese (0.428%)
Brazilians (0.351%)
Japanese (0.291%)
Russians (0.271%)
Philippinos (0.101%)
Thais (0,051%)
Koreans (0.024%)
Britons (0.021%)
Americans (0.016%)
These numbers are extremely interesting because it shows that combined crimes and offences can be very misleading. Thai and Vietnamese (see NPA stats) have a similar combined number (699 and 718) but 90% of Thai arrested are offenders, while about 80% of Vietnamese arrested are criminals. As a result, the real crime rate of Vietnamese is 11 times higher than that of Thais.
We also see that Japanese themselves are more likely to commit real crimes than anybody except the Chinese and the Brazilians (most of which are nikkei, that is Brazilians of Japanese descent). Westerners and Koreans are by far the most peaceful residents in Japan, with an fantastically low crime rate, about 12 to 18 times lower than that of the Japanese.
What these number teach us is not to assimilate neighouring countries haphazardly. In Japan, the Chinese commit 18x more crimes than the Koreans, and the Russians have 10x higher crime rate than the other Europeans. At the extremes, a Chinese is statistically 26.75 times more likely to commit a crime than an American (USA).
Comparing continents, it is interesting to note the very high crime rate of South Americans (0.418%), actually higher than that of Africans (0.289%) once the offences removed. South Americans in Japan are almost 20x more likely to commit crimes than North Americans. Could this be due to the fact that 93% of South Americans in Japan are residents (as opposed to visitors), while 93% of North Americans are (short-term) visitors ? This wouldn"t work for Africa, though, as only 1/3 of the Africans in Japan are residents.
How to interpret these statistics ?
I suspect that less Japanese have been arrested compared to the real number of crimes or offences, because, foreigners (especially those who do not look Japanese) have a higher chance of being suspected and arrested, even if they aren"t condemned because they were not the real culprits.
In addition, many problems are never reported to the police by the Japanese, especially when they can settle the issue between them. So again, once foreigners are involved, the chances are much higher that the police be involved and that it appears in the statistics, which explains why Japanese have such a disproportionally low rate of offences (0.049%) compared to crime (0.291%). The point is that when one of the side does not speak Japanese (or not well enough), the police must be called. That certainly increases considerably the number of "official" foreign crimes and offences.
Discuss this article on the Japan Forum
http://www.jref.com/society/foreign_crime_in_japan.shtml
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