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Longitudinal and Criminal Career Research in Japan

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Abstract

Longitudinal research on the development of criminal careers has rarely been carried out in Japan. This article reviews the advantages and problems of longitudinal research, major international longitudinal surveys, and key conclusions about criminal careers. It then discusses results obtained in a study of the recidivism of over 700 male Japanese sex offenders against young children. It was estimated that 24 % of these men would be rearrested for sex offenses within 5 years after release. Older offenders and those on parole were less likely to offend. The article then discusses the criminal careers of two large samples totalling 1,700,000 Japanese offenders. The crime rate (the age-crime curve) was consistently higher for the 1935 birth cohort than for the 1950 birth cohort. The article concludes by reviewing new longitudinal research that is tracking the criminal careers of ex-inmates of Japanese training schools.

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Notes

  1. “Violent sexual offenses” include indecency through compulsion, forcible rape, rape in the course of robbery, and sexually motivated kidnapping. “Violent sexual offenses against young children” means the above-listed offenses in which the victims were under 13 years of age.

  2. For example, those who were hospitalized right after being released from prison and stayed in hospital until they died.

  3. “Sexual offenses” include both “violent sexual offenses” and nonviolent offenses that are sexually motivated, such as indecency in public, violation of the “Law for Punishing Acts Related to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, and for Protecting Children,” and sexually motivated burglary/larceny, etc.

  4. Note that it is the day of arrest, NOT the day of offense.

  5. The median length of parole supervision period among the parolees (N = 296) was 97 days (i.e., approximately 3 months) and the 90 percentile was 189 days (i.e., approximately 6 months). The longest period of parole supervision was 352 days.

  6. (0.964 − 1) x 100 = −3.6.

  7. There were only three such cases among the 733 subjects.

  8. Until then, officers were not allowed to have direct contact with the subjects and therefore officers had to make observations of the subjects from a distance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

    David P. Farrington

  2. National Research Institute of Police Science, Kashiwa, Japan

    Yutaka Harada

  3. Ministry of Justice, Tokyo, Japan

    Hiroyuki Shinkai & Tetsuki Moriya

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  1. David P. Farrington
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  2. Yutaka Harada
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Farrington, D.P., Harada, Y., Shinkai, H. et al. Longitudinal and Criminal Career Research in Japan. Asian Criminology 10, 255–276 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-015-9222-1

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