Questions/Answers

The Special Crime Network’s Information Receipt and Dissemination Center in Loei province or the Loei DSI Station was established in 2010, supported by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI), a law enforcement agency under the Justice Ministry responsible for preventing, suppressing, investigating and inquiring criminal cases throughout the Kingdom of Thailand that need to employ special investigation methods prescribed in the Special Case Investigation Act. The purposes of the Leoi DSI Station’s establishment to function as the DSI are: 1. To elevate community crime prevention capacity by reporting clues, monitoring and alerting crime to the locals; 2. To receive complaints and denunciations, and coordinate with public and people sectors; 3. To disseminate information of value to the locals for crime prevention; 4. To be the People’s Learning Center for transferring knowledge and technology essential to prevent crime in the area; 5. To be an effective model for sustainably controlling and solving crime in the area; 6. To help the DSI to gather evidence for offender prosecutions; 7. To be the locals’ advisor giving advice and suggestions for seeking the DSI’s assistance in the justice process. Presently, there are 480 members but could help 26,595 people charged wrongfully in 9 cases.

The Loei DSI Station has its organizational structure, work procedure, performance evaluation, specific tasks assigned to each member who heartily works with no emoluments to jointly form its yearly action plan responding to the locals’ need, to implement activities and systematically follow up the complaints submitted to the DSI for help. The locals have faith in the Loei DSI Station due to its member work inspection system, participation as witnesses in criminal proceedings, opinion openness of its leader who accepts different ideas, makes decision to change ways of working based on actual problems and continually advances legal knowledge of members.

The Loei DSI Station’s 7/24 service to the locals resulted in their cooperation in reporting crime clues and filing their complaints to the DSI. Coordinating the DSI for legal actions by the Loei DSI Station, the offenders partaking in illegally mining minerals in Loei province were prosecuted leading to the decrease of conflict between the capitalists and the locals. The locals who had been threatened by the capitalist have felt safe, joined in preserving natural resources and environment, stood up for fighting against crime in their areas with the Loei DSI Station, capable of protecting community, society and nation’s interests.

Prior to establishing the Loei DSI Station in Loei province rich in vast natural resources, the problems of national reserved forest area trespassing and mining minerals without mineral leases were serious. Some locals standing up to the capitalists were charged wrongfully. The conflict between the capitalists, locals, government officers and NGOs employees widened, while health and environment problems stemmed from mineral mining’s pollution. Inspections revealed cyanides, manganese, mercury and arsenic in the locals’ blood higher than the standard value, and poison in environment. By functioning of the Loei DSI Station, its members jointly worked with the DSI officials to collect evidence for use at the trials leading to the court’s issuance of orders to close the mineral mine and to dismiss criminal charges against the locals by the capitalists. Normally, legal proceeding in criminal cases consumes years of time, but coordinating the Department of Special Investigation by the Loei DSI Station caused fact-finding inspections, investigations and inquiries into cases filed by the locals finished in 1 year. This way shortened times for preparing essential documents and travelling to file petitions at the headquarters of Department of Special Investigation, and reduced steps to propose the complaints, and cut costs of people.

The Loei DSI Station’s working process by the locals’ cooperation in countering the capitalists’ illegal actions helped by some local corrupt officials never happens in Loei province. The success of the locals’ concerted actions changed their attitudes from fear of the power of government agencies and capitalists to awareness of the capacity of themselves and community to preserve natural resources and environment and fight injustice in societies. People have their own opinions not rely on the public sector as in the past. They themselves managed the problems with readiness to drive people in other areas to unite for their strength.

The cooperation, changes of attitude, and ability in resolving problems of the locals is a new conceptual model that arose from the exchanges of economic, social and health problems in communities in Loei province based on consideration of the reports on crime watch in the areas, the risks and trends toward various types of crime, the potential and sincerity to handle the problems of local government agencies in Loei province, and the people’s restriction of access to government information about obtaining mineral leases, the rights of people under the Constitution, and the channels of contacts and communications with government agencies.

The DSI utilized the “Loei DSI Station” model as its tools for helping the locals in another 4 areas to resolve and prevent their crime, namely the locals in provinces of Trat for tackling natural resource trespass, public cheating and fraud, informal debt problems; Sa-Kaeo for dealing with child trafficking for forced labor and prostitution, pollution, copyright violation, natural resource trespass problems; Nan for handling natural resource trespass, narcotics, public cheating and fraud, factory pollution problems; Prachaup-Kirikhan for coping with natural resource trespass, ID forgery, human trafficking for forced Myanmese labor, factory pollution, endangered wildlife, narcotics and firearms smuggling problems.

The Loei DSI Station own resources included members in spirit, office, action plans and activities, communication channels (community broadcasting towers, local forums, community radio), local partners (civil defense volunteers, community police, and volunteer groups “RakBanKerd”, “HinLekFi”) The resources supplied by the DSI comprised a handbook for local crime prevention and intervention, experts on laws and justice processes, complaint forms, technology (DSI Map, an application for inspecting natural resource and environment boundaries by people), complaints and denunciations submission and legal advice request channels, and training courses on evidence collection, crime scene access, suspect recognition, intelligence, teamwork, coordination with the public sector.

Since 2010, the Loei DSI Station has incessantly advanced knowledge and capacity of its members for acknowledging and effectively tackling problems until its gained recognition and respect from people and government agencies in the area causing it full of the sense of pride and determination to resolve their community problems. The Loei DSI Station’s work has generated good impacts on society, economy and environment. For social impacts, it included the cohesion of people, peaceful society as people feel safe in their life and property without being threatened, detained and charged wrongfully, increase of networks for community strength and free from threats. Regarding economic impacts, the locals earned much more incomes from cash crops and homestay tourism services in the area exploited by the mineral mine. The locals also planned to plant various tropical fruits and trees like southern langsat, durian, and coffee, cocoa, etc. in the area. Impacts on environment comprised “Fai-Hin-Nam-Lon”, a weir built by people collaboration to reduce poison in agricultural water resources, to block the flow of toxic suspensions, a leftover from mineral mining, to water resources, and increase plenty of aquatic animals (rock crabs) and agricultural plants (especially small vegetable fern) for consumption and ecological restoration.

Yes

The Loei DSI Station was assessed by Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University in 2018. The results of quantitative (data from questionnaires) and qualitative (data from individual and focus-group interviews) research revealed the satisfaction of people and stakeholders at the most level (96.40%), the rapid and timely reporting information to members who can coordinate with Loei DSI Station at all times, the jointly monitoring and following strangers in the area by the members and community, the arrest of offenders resulting from reporting incidents and collecting evidence, and the cooperation from all people in the area by relations between the members and relatives.

The SDG16 targets and indicators were employed by Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University for assessing the Loei DSI Station’s success in promoting peaceful societies for sustainable development. Interviewing people and all stakeholder groups revealed that the reserved forest area trespassing and illegal mineral mining problems in Loei province ended by the judicial process, the locals feel safe in their daily life, the new member recruitment endures constantly from one generation to another, families to relatives, one village to another, one province to another facing with the same problems advised and supported by the Loei DSI Station for its strength and sustainability.

The assessment showed the locals’ feeling of safety and happiness in life due to their faith and confidence in the “ Leoi DSI Station” as their adviser that they can undoubtedly trust and rely on. They are at peace, able to live and work normally, feel more confident to fight against the government sector’s unfair systems. By the Loei DSI Station’s implementation, the members and locals have jointly monitored and strongly countered mineral mining which reflected their ability to protect and monitor the State’s land for regaining the community forest land and endlessly preserving natural resources for their next generations.

The Loei DSI Station’s key implementation guideline for driving actions to reach the SDG Goal included cooperation of people at 4 levels, namely acknowledgement, acquaintance, confidence, and all in the same boat stages. The acknowledgement stage starts by accepting volunteers in spirit to participate in its activities until they have acquaintances, then their capacity and skill will be strengthened for protecting themselves by employing modern technology and equipment, before moving to the stages of confidence in participation and collaboration with the Loei DSI Station. For the Loei DSI Station’s possesses, the internal process implemented by itself comprised recruiting, increasing and maintaining its members, training for enhancing its members’ knowledge and strengthening relationships between the members and community, developing effective communication channels, producing and publicizing information and crime watch reports, evaluating its performance outcome, coordinating with the public agencies, media, NGOs (the Loei Radio Station for Children and Youths), selecting outstanding members to receive the DSI Awards. Its external process supported by the DSI comprised activities, equipment and tools, training courses, seminars and awards of recognition, work integration with local government agencies (namely agencies under the Royal Thai Armed Force, Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, and Education Ministry) and related agencies.

The lessons learned showed that the Loei DSI Station’s success resulted from heartily working by their own ways with devotion and determination of all leaders, their ability to protect themselves when working to seek facts and evidence, their self-development by learning and increasing capacity to handle more complicated crime, their potential to analyze problems and obstacles happened while working for preventing repeated faults, their exchange of information for expanding the network of working, cooperation, good relationships, and their working to create new leaders and replace them with former leaders for sustainable strength of the Loei DSI Station and local communities.