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The effect of a social reintegration (parole) program on drug-related prison inmates in Japan: a 4-year prospective study

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Abstract

Social reintegration has been known to protect against recidivism, but its effects against drug-use relapse have previously remained unclear. To address this gap, the present study sampled 196 inmates imprisoned for drug-related offenses in Japan. We examined the protective effects of a social reintegration (parole) program against recidivism and drug-use relapse using a 4-year prospective design. During the 4-year follow up, 79 (40.3 %) of the participants reoffended and 61 (31.1 %) relapsed into drug use. The results suggest that the parole program was significantly associated with a decreased risk of recidivism, even if participants’ age, sentence length, number of prison terms, educational levels, and gang membership were controlled for. However, the effects of the parole program on drug relapse disappeared when the above variables were controlled for. To decrease the risk of relapse, drug-related inmates may need both prosocial communities and rehabilitative environments. The Japanese criminal justice system needs to introduce drug treatment courts for drug users.

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Notes

  1. Our study defined drug-related offenses as trafficking, possession, and/or use of illegal drugs. Any offense committed under the influence of drugs was considered a drug-related offense because offenders were using the drug. For example, theft under the influence of cannabis is drug-related offense. However, an offense indirectly related to illegal drugs is not drug-related offense. For example, theft of money because the thief needed it to buy illegal drugs is not considered a drug-related offense because the person did not truck, possess, or use illegal drugs.

  2. For this study, thorough background checks were done for the offender’s family and friends to confirm that no families or friends were involved with criminal activities.

  3. In the past, Japan has shown the highest literacy rate in the world (97.9 % [1951] and 97.8 % [1960]; Saito 2012). No one among the participants requested to have someone else write down the name and address they were asked to provide. All of the participants in this study could write their own names and read several Japanese books without any difficulty.

  4. Around half (56.4 %) of housing providers are parolees’ family members, such as a partner or mother and father (Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice 2009). Around one third of providers (33.9 %) are official parole providers (Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice 2009).

  5. A Japanese judge imposes imprisonment for simple illegal drug use (Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice 2009). The judge also imposes imprisonment without suspension for repeated drug use (Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice 2009). All of our participants were repeat illegal users; thus, their drug use will always result in a return to prison without suspension. If the evidence supports their drug use, they cannot escape prison.

  6. A reoffending incident includes both drug-free offenses (such as murder) and drug-related offenses (such as drug use).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Niigata Prison, Niigata, Japan

    Kenji Yokotani & Katsuhiro Tamura

  2. Niigata Seiryo University, Niigata, Japan

    Kenji Yokotani

Authors
  1. Kenji Yokotani
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  2. Katsuhiro Tamura
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Correspondence to Kenji Yokotani.

Ethics declarations

Funding

The present study was funded by the Nikkoso Foundation for a Safe Society (SZ2014A-004).

Conflict of Interest

The first author declares that he has no conflict of interest. The second author also declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the present study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

The present study abbreviated informed consent because of five reasons. First, informed consent created a number of disadvantages for participants. Most of participants were ex-prisoners. If researchers got informed consent from them, the researchers had to remind them about prison, which could make them unpleasant. Furthermore, our contact from the prison to the participants could leak information about the links between the participants and our prison. The leak of information could disadvantage them in free society. Second, participants’ informed consent and researchers’ will do not affect our sampling methods. This is because our electrical data are based on daily activity logs in Japanese prisons. Regardless of the participants and researchers’ will, Japanese prison sampled participants and recorded their data as their professional tasks. Third, most of the participants were out of prison, so the results of our data could not affect ex-prisoners directly. Fourth, if we analyzed only those who could get informed consent in prison, the data could be biased strongly and cannot be a representative data of drug-related offenders in a Japanese prison. Fifth, correct recidivism rate was only calculated through our prospective design. The correct recidivism rate was essential to clarify and prevent recidivism.

Following these reasons, we abbreviated informed consent. Abbreviation of informed consent was frequent in epidemiological study (e.g., information about influenza and Ebola virus was frequently used without informed consent from patients).

The present study was also acknowledged by an ethical committee in a local university and a research committee in a local prison in Japan.

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Yokotani, K., Tamura, K. The effect of a social reintegration (parole) program on drug-related prison inmates in Japan: a 4-year prospective study. Asian Criminology 12, 127–141 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-016-9235-4

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