Abstract:
The objectives of this research are to study (1) the cooperation to be a witness in criminal cases of the people. (2) peoples confidence toward the safety witness protection programs under the Witness Protection in Criminal Case Act 2003 and (3) to recommend the suitable and practical measures for witness protection in Thai society. The research is a field research that used quantitative methods. Questionnaires were conducted with 400 people who walk in and asked for some services from police at the Lumpini Police Station, selected by accidental random sampling. The SPSS computer program processed the collected data and described the analyzed data in Percentage, Mean, Standard Deviation, Chi-Square and t-test at the 0.05 level of significance. The finding revealed that male gives much more cooperation to be a witness in criminal cases than female gives. The witnesses with different occupations express different level of their cooperaton. The witnesses who feel insecure tend to show less cooperation. Furthermore, the research found that most of the samples did not agree with the use of special measures under the Witness Protection in Criminal Case Act 2003, such as establishing a new identity for a witness (name, address and occupation) etc. It seems that these measures are not practical because they could not help witnesses feel much more safety than before. Thus, Thai government should formulate the new measures with regard to the local society that fit to promote safety witnesses protection and cooperation for positive impacts on crime prevention and suppression in the future.