Abstract
Objective
Third-party policing (TPP) refers to police efforts to persuade or coerce third parties to take some responsibility for crime control and prevention. The Yakuza Exclusion Ordinances (YEOs) of Japan aim to combat organized crime syndicates—the Yakuza. Consistent with the principles of TPP, the YEOs prohibit third parties (i.e., non-yakuza individuals) from providing any benefit to the yakuza. We argue that the effectiveness of the YEOs may depend on the strategic relationship among yakuza syndicates, where yakuza syndicates choose their power strategically to gain advantages over competition among rival yakuza syndicates.
Methods
We use unique data on the yakuza and construct a regional concentration index of yakuza syndicates. Exploiting prefecture-level variation in the YEOs’ enactment dates, we apply a difference-in-differences approach, while allowing for heterogeneity of the YEOs’ effect by the concentration of yakuza syndicates.
Results
The YEOs decrease the number of yakuza members and the effect of YEOs is greater in regions with lower concentration levels of yakuza syndicates. Given that yakuza members decrease by about 30% during the period of our study, our estimates suggest that the YEOs on average contribute to about 20% of a recent reduction of yakuza members.
Conclusions
The YEOs are related to TPP strategies that rely on coercive techniques, and thus our results suggest the effectiveness of TPP strategies against organized crime. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of the YEOs’ effect suggests the effectiveness of enforcement policies that intensively target regions with lower concentration of organized crime.
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Notes
There used to be 22 designated yakuza syndicates, but in 2011, 2 of them, both of which operated only in Okinawa, merged.
In 2007, the Minister of Justice announced guidelines to reduce victimization (e.g., citizens, corporations, and governments) by the yakuza. The guidelines emphasize the importance of avoiding associating with the yakuza in any way, given that the association between the yakuza and non-yakuza may serve as income sources for the yakuza. Since this announcement was made, strategies for combating the yakuza have sought to emphasize severing the association.
There are some differences across prefectures. Under the YEOs, non-yakuza who make contracts are required to check whether the other parties to the contracts are related to yakuza. The relationship that has to be checked differs across prefectures. In a few prefectures, non-yakuza need to check only whether the other parties to contracts are yakuza members. Yet in Tokyo, non-yakuza need to check whether the other parties have been closely associated with the yakuza. This requirement in Tokyo is stringent, but in many other prefectures, non-yakuza are still required to ask the other parties to their contracts if at least five years have passed since they retired from their yakuza syndicates. This rule is often called a five-year rule.
This figure is based on the data by National Police Agency (2015). The reported number of yakuza members is the number reported in December of each year. For readers’ convenience, we report these numbers as the number of yakuza members in the subsequent years (e.g., the number in 2011 is the number as of December 2010). There are two types of yakuza members: regular members, who belong to particular yakuza syndicates; semi-regular members, who do not belong to but are allied with particular yakuza syndicates. Figure 1 plots the change in the total number.
The reason that the enactment dates are spread over about two years is that the YEOs are prefecture-level ordinances and the enactment dates vary from prefecture to prefecture.
To keep order, a yakuza syndicate may use violence against its members who violate its norms, even cutting off the offending members’ fingers. In the yakuza world, finger chopping can represent punishment or sincere apology and remorse. This tradition has been on the decline in recent years, but it remains in some areas. In recent years, yakuza members have increasingly been forced to pay money as a penalty. If they cannot pay, they may be punished violently.
In several prefectures, the YEOs were amended after their introduction. For example, Akita enacted YEOs in March 2011 and then amended them in July 2011. As we are interested in the TPP-like aspect of the YEOs, we define the enactment date as the date at which the clauses to regulate non-yakuza activity were incorporated. Accordingly, we define the Akita enactment date as July 2011. The YEOs were similarly amended in Tottori, Fukuoka, and Saga.
In “Appendix A”, we conduct several robustness checks using alternative indices. First, we use a time-dependent YCI. Second, we use alternative definitions of yakuza shares \(s_{pg}\) and a resulting YCI. Third, we use alternative indices for the regional competition among rival yakuza syndicates. Our empirical results are robust to all these specifications.
The represented estimates correspond to the estimates of \(\delta _{1}\) and \(\delta _{2}\) in the following regression:
$$\begin{aligned} y_{pt}&= \delta _{1} YEO_{pt} \times Low_{p} + \delta _{2} YEO_{pt} \times High_{p} + \eta X_{pt} + \mu _{p} + \xi _{t} + \sum _{r \in R} \delta _{pr} \rho _{r} t + \varepsilon _{pt}, \end{aligned}$$where \(Low_{p}\) denotes the low YCI (less than or equal to the median) and \(High_{p}\) denotes the high YCI (greater than the median). This equation does not include the main term of the YEOs to avoid multicollinearity.
That is, we take the mean of the YCI variables and subtract this mean from each YCI variable.
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Acknowledgements
We contributed equally to this study. We thank Daniel DellaPosta, Corina Graif, Takashi Harada, Noboru Hirosue, Hajime Katayama, Hanae Katayama, Yoshiki Kobayashi, Thomas A. Loughran, Yutaka Maeda, Mark Moore, Jun Nakabayashi, Kentaro Nakajima, Holly Nguyen, Wayne Osgood, Brian Phillips, Barry Ruback, Peter Reuter, Tomoyori Saito, Yoshimichi Sato, Stephanie M. Scott, Nobuo Suzuki, Christopher Winship, Letian Zhang, and the participants at the 38th Annual APPAM Fall Research Conference, Osaka University, Pennsylvania State University, and Tohoku University for their helpful comments and discussion. We also thank the editor and three anonymous referees for their comments. Kamada would like to thank Grant-in-Aid from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellows (26-5010). The usual disclaimer applies.
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Hoshino, T., Kamada, T. Third-Party Policing Approaches Against Organized Crime: An Evaluation of the Yakuza Exclusion Ordinances. J Quant Criminol 37, 791–811 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-020-09466-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-020-09466-6