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Reports of police beating and associated harms among people who inject drugs in Bangkok, Thailand: a serial cross-sectional study Hayashi, Kanna; Ti, Lianping; Csete, Joanne; Kaplan, Karyn; Suwannawong, Paisan; Wood, Evan; Kerr, Thomas H.

Abstract

Background: Thailand has for years attempted to address illicit drug use through aggressive drug law enforcement. Despite accounts of widespread violence by police against people who inject drugs (IDU), the impact of police violence has not been well investigated. In the wake of an intensified police crackdown in 2011, we sought to identify the prevalence and correlates of experiencing police beating among IDU in Bangkok. Methods Community-recruited samples of IDU in Bangkok were surveyed between June 2009 and October 2011. Multivariate log-binomial regression was used to identify factors associated with reporting police beating. Results In total, 639 unique IDU participated in this serial cross-sectional study, with 240 (37.6%) participants reporting that they had been beaten by police. In multivariate analyses, reports of police beating were associated with male gender (Adjusted Prevalence Ratio [APR] = 4.43), younger age (APR = 1.69), reporting barriers to accessing healthcare (APR = 1.23), and a history of incarceration (APR = 2.51), compulsory drug detention (APR = 1.22) and syringe sharing (APR = 1.44), and study enrolment in 2011 (APR = 1.27) (all p 

Item Metadata

Title
Reports of police beating and associated harms among people who inject drugs in Bangkok, Thailand: a serial cross-sectional study
Creator
Hayashi, Kanna; Ti, Lianping; Csete, Joanne; Kaplan, Karyn; Suwannawong, Paisan; Wood, Evan; Kerr, Thomas H.
Publisher
BioMed Central
Date Issued
2013-08-07
Description
Background: Thailand has for years attempted to address illicit drug use through aggressive drug law enforcement. Despite accounts of widespread violence by police against people who inject drugs (IDU), the impact of police violence has not been well investigated. In the wake of an intensified police crackdown in 2011, we sought to identify the prevalence and correlates of experiencing police beating among IDU in Bangkok. Methods Community-recruited samples of IDU in Bangkok were surveyed between June 2009 and October 2011. Multivariate log-binomial regression was used to identify factors associated with reporting police beating. Results In total, 639 unique IDU participated in this serial cross-sectional study, with 240 (37.6%) participants reporting that they had been beaten by police. In multivariate analyses, reports of police beating were associated with male gender (Adjusted Prevalence Ratio [APR] = 4.43), younger age (APR = 1.69), reporting barriers to accessing healthcare (APR = 1.23), and a history of incarceration (APR = 2.51), compulsory drug detention (APR = 1.22) and syringe sharing (APR = 1.44), and study enrolment in 2011 (APR = 1.27) (all p 
Subject
HIV/AIDS; Drug law enforcement; Injection drug use; Harm reduction; Thailand
Genre
Article
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2015-10-24
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
DOI
10.14288/1.0132583
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/54964
Affiliation
Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of; Other UBC; Non UBC; Medicine, Faculty of
Citation
BMC Public Health. 2013 Aug 07;13(1):733
Publisher DOI
10.1186/1471-2458-13-733
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Copyright Holder
Hayashi et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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DSpace

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Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)