The Korean Institute of Criminology has been consolidating its position as the only national policy research institute in the field of crime and criminal justice by leading multi-disciplinary researches. As a member of UNPNI (United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Program Network), KIC has become a global research institute by significantly increasing international cooperation with global criminal justice institutes and contributing to crime prevention in international community. The International Strategic Research Centre has been actively putting efforts to realize the goal of ‘building global research capacity and advancing research outcomes’ and this will lead to KIC’s solid position in the international community.
Under this vision, the International Strategic Research Centre has set three year long-term master plan from 2016 to 2018 in order to achieve cooperation networks with institutes in the fields of criminology, criminal justice and criminal justice policy through joint researches and academic exchanges.
KIC recognizes that effective crime prevention policy and in-depth analysis on crime require systematic and accurate collection, analysis, distribution of criminal justice statistics and timely provision of statistical information. Also, as the nature of crime has transcend the borders, the emphasis is to be laid on securing comparability of international statistics.
UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) has been providing technical support and advice in order to increase statistical data’s availability and quality by building statistical capacity. Accordingly, UNODC has been developing training programs for data collection, analysis and distribution.
Recognizing the need of crime statistics, the International Strategic Research Centre continued to putting efforts to develop criminal justice statistics in Asia and the Pacific region with UNODC from 2013. In order to establish crime data system in Asia and the Pacific countries which is similar to the crime statistics cooperation center established by UNODC and Mexico’s INEGI (Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico), it has been closely cooperating with the UNODC from 2014. UNODC has built ICCS (International Classification of Crimes for Statistical Purposes) to assist development of crime statistics in the developing countries and UN-CTS (United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems) to realize this goal.
Since crime has become organized and transnational, collecting regional crime statistics and comparing the global statistics are essential in combating transnational crime. But as the crime statistics system in developing countries is fragile, they are undergoing difficulties in establishing their own policies on crime statistics. There have been increasing cases of transnational crime such as human trafficking, drug trade and money laundering in Southeast Asia, and the triangle area of Thailand, Burma and Laos is infamous for drug production and trade globally.
Thus the transitional crime statistics in Southeast Asia region can provide directions on criminal justice policies. Moreover, as realizing criminal justice and crime prevention are the common duties of every government in the world, institutionalizing crime statistics in the region is vital for sharing criminal justice policies and preventing major crimes.
Therefore KIC has co-hosted 1st regional meeting held in Thailand 2014 to share information on problems the region has been facing as to operation of crime statistics and hosted 2nd regional meeting in Seoul 2016 to create a resolution on the establishment of criminal justice statistics center in Asia. In 2017, KIC has co-hosted a training workshop on victim survey with UNODC and TIJ (Thailand Institute of Justice) and conferred participation certificates to practitioners of crime statistics from Southeast Asian countries. Director of the International Strategic Research Center, Seong-Jin Yeon has received the certificate as instructor for crime victim survey from UNODC.