Notice from the university

(Interview at King County Prosecutor's Office)

I stayed in Seattle, Washington for 2 days from February 27th to March 3th, and conducted research on the treatment of juvenile delinquents and support for crime victims.Participants were 8 students majoring in criminal psychology from the Faculty of Human Sciences and 10 students majoring in child studies from the Faculty of Education.

In Japan, in 1997, an 11-year-old child was murdered, decapitated, and placed on top of the main gate of an elementary school. (Kobe serial child murder case).A month later, when it was reported at a press conference that the culprit was a 1-year-old second-year junior high school student, shock spread throughout Japan.After that, until the beginning of the 14s, there were a series of so-called mysterious incidents caused by underage suspects in Japan.In response to such a situation, the Diet tried to respond by lowering the age at which juveniles can be admitted to juvenile training schools and strengthening penalties for juveniles, such as extending juvenile imprisonment.However, the principle of juvenile law is the sound upbringing of juveniles, not the punishment of juveniles.Is it right to make the Juvenile Law stricter?

Our country's juvenile law was originally enacted on the model of the United States.And in the United States, earlier than in Japan, stricter punishment of the juvenile law has been promoted since the 1970s.Therefore, I went to the United States and conducted a global study of juvenile delinquency with the aim of confirming whether severe punishment of juveniles would help prevent the occurrence of juvenile delinquency.

First, as a preliminary study, we visited the Hyogo Prefectural Police Headquarters Juvenile Division, Juvenile Support Center, Kakogawa Gakuen/Harima Gakuen (juvenile training school), Kobe Juvenile Classification Center, and Wakaba Gakuen (Kobe Municipal Children's Self-reliance Support Facility). We invited lawyers and legal instructors and received lectures on the rehabilitation of juveniles in Japan.

In Seattle, they visited Seattle Police Headquarters, University of Washington Police Department, King County Juvenile Court, King County Prosecutor's Office, Youth Justice Center, University of Seattle, and Bellevue University, and attended lectures.

As a result, we found the following.

In Washington State, the juvenile law applies to ages 18 to 8, which is lower than in Japan.In other words, the tightening of the juvenile law to reduce the number of juvenile crimes has completely failed.

Then, what kind of treatment did juvenile delinquents receive in the United States after that?
Today, the prevailing view is that juveniles are not allowed inside the walls unless the crime is extremely heinous, such as when the general public is endangered if the juvenile who commits the crime is not isolated from society.This probably stems from the harmful effects of putting criminal juveniles in a juvenile training school or juvenile prison, where the environment makes them more criminal, or that juveniles are unable to successfully reintegrate into the community once they emerge from the prison. I wondered if that was the case.

Then, where is the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents done?
It is unthinkable in Japan, but in the United States, communities seem to be working hard to prevent recidivism by juvenile delinquents.This time, due to the short stay, I was only able to research public institutions and was not able to investigate activities in the local community.However, the efforts of American society to prevent delinquency and rehabilitate juvenile delinquents serve as a model, and I believe that they should be adopted in Japan as well.We believe that this kind of research will eventually lead to graduation research, so we plan to continue our research on the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents.

(Person in charge: Makoto Nakayama, Department of Human Psychology)
⇒ Back to list