Know before you go: 30 destinations where Brits get arrested

This is John Preece bringing you another SIN infographic, this time courtesy of new data from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The FCO is the government department responsible for British interests outside of Britain, and it has three priorities: Keep Britain safe, make Britain prosperous and support British nationals overseas (the Science and Innovation Network’s work generally falls under the Prosperity directorate). As part of the Consular directorate, the FCO assists British nationals who run into trouble abroad and has recently released last year’s data on consular assistance (along with a great video).

The FCO has an excellent travel advice service, and reminds readers to obey the local laws and customs when travelling abroad. We were interested in how many people ignored this advice:

We took the data from the twenty countries with the most consular assistance requests, plus ten more with high drug-related arrests (unfortunately, full data is not available for all countries). The size of each country’s flag represents the number of arrests per 10,000 British nationals, and the line represents the proportion of arrests that were drug-related (note: the Philippines is 0 %, not 100 %).

Please be aware that this graphic does not show you where you are most likely to get arrested when travelling; it shows you where British people have been disproportionately getting into trouble relative to their law-abiding compatriots. The Guardian‘s datablog also has a good analysis of the data.

Remember: Take out insurance, check your paperwork and research your destination. Safe travels!