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外国人社会との共存のために
日本にとって外国人社会との共存は大きな課題。それだけに外国人に関する統計数字には
誤解のない慎重な取り扱いを願いたい。
Learning to read the numbers
You can't believe everything you read!
In my last essay here about crime by foreigners, part of my argument was based on a statistic from a Japan Times article. I wrote, "crimes by foreigners are ... estimated at just 1.39 percent of all crimes committed." But I later realized something crucial: Japan's police only make arrests for about 20 percent of all crimes. And if you don't make an arrest, how can you know whether a crime was committed by a foreigner?
The answer is, you cannot. So I called The Japan Times to ask where they got that 1.39 percent figure: "That was from a Kyodo News article," I was told. So I called Kyodo, and discovered that they had made a serious error. The 1.39 percent statistic was calculated by their staff. They took the total number of foreigners arrested and divided it by the total number of crimes reported. But that compares apples and oranges, and tells us nothing meaningful.
A better calculation is to compare foreigners arrested to the total number of people arrested. When you do that, you get 4.5 percent. That's right. Nearly 5 percent of all people arrested in Japan are foreigners. Since only about 2 percent of Japan's population is foreign, that suggests we are committing crimes at more than twice the rate of Japanese.
So gaijin are crime-prone after all, right? Not necessarily. Without thinking carefully about other factors, you can jump to the wrong conclusion. Consider:
"Arrests" and "crime" are not the same thing. Being arrested does not mean someone is guilty, and the police are quicker to question and arrest foreign people than they are Japanese.
About 55 percent of foreigners in Japan are men, whereas less than half of Japan's population is male. And as we know, men commit the vast majority of crimes.
Likewise, foreigners in Japan have a much lower average age than the Japanese population as a whole. And younger people tend to commit more crimes than seniors, who make up a large chunk of Japan's people.
So if we could compare a group of Japanese and foreigners here who had the same demographics, I think we would find that the crime rates of the two groups are quite similar.
Clearly, it's dangerous to take media statistics at face value.
Nevertheless, we're hearing too much about foreign crime. The governor of Kanagawa Prefecture recently declared that all Chinese exchange students were "sneaking thieves." He later apologized, but the damage was done.
Perhaps worse, the Immigration Bureau has recently been vigorously deporting long-term foreign residents for visa violations - even to the point of tearing apart families with children born in Japan. While most illegals do need to be sent home, it's not in the interest of anybody to split families and deport people who have lived here for years and are gainfully employed.
Japan's future depends on a society that lives peacefully with a foreign minority. The xenophobic officials and institutions here need to learn how to read the numbers a little better.
Shukan ST: Nov. 28, 2003
(C) All rights reserved
- last essay here
- 10月17日号掲載
- crime
- 犯罪
- argument
- 主張
- statistic
- 統計値
- are ... estimated at 〜
- 〜と概算されている
- all crimes committed
- 全ての犯罪
- something crucial
- とても重大なこと
- only make arrests for about 〜
- 約〜しか犯人を検挙していない
- figure
- 数字
- Kyodo News article
- 共同通信社の配信記事
- divided it by 〜
- それを〜で割った
- crimes reported
- 記録されている犯罪
- compares apples and oranges
- 比較できないものを比べる
- calculation
- 計算
- compare foreigners arrested
- 逮捕者の総計と逮捕された外国人の数を比較する
- we
- 私たち外国人
- at more than twice the rate of Japanese
- 日本人が犯罪を犯す2倍以上の率で
- crime-prone
- 犯罪を犯す傾向がある
- jump to the wrong conclusion
- 誤った結論に飛びつく
- Consider:
- 以下のことを考えてみてください
- guilty
- 有罪の
- police are quicker to question and arrest 〜 than 〜
- 〜には〜に対するより早く職務質問・逮捕を行なう
- whereas
- その一方
- vast majority
- 大多数
- Likewise
- 同様に
- a large chunk of 〜
- 〜の大半
- demographics
- 人口統計
- at face value
- 額面どおりに
- governor
- 県知事
- declared
- 発言した
- exchange students
- 交換留学生
- sneaking thieves
- こそ泥
- apologized
- 謝罪した
- Immigration Bureau
- 入国管理局
- vigorously
- 盛んに
- (has been)deporting
- 国外退去させてきた
- long-term
- 長期の
- violations
- 違反
- even to the point of 〜
- それも〜することまでして
- tearing apart families with children born in Japan
- 日本で生まれた子供のいる家族を引き裂く
- illegals
- 不法入国者
- in the interest of 〜
- 〜の利益にかなって
- gainfully employed
- 収入の多い仕事に就いている
- foreign minority
- 少数派の外国人
- xenophobic
- 外国人嫌いの
- institutions
- 役所