POLICING JAPAN

• NCJ Number: 147519
• Journal: Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 84 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1993) Pages: 410-427
• Author(s): D H Foote
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 18 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Book Review
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Review of Policing in Japan: A Study on Making Crime by Setsuo Miyazawa, translated by Frank G. Bennett, Jr. with John O. Haley, State University of New York Press, 1992.

Annotation

A review of a book concerning the Japanese police is provided.

Abstract

This book, the English version of a work first published in 1985, represents the first observational study of the Japanese police by a Japanese scholar and the only study to examine the behavior of Japanese detectives. The author, Setsuo Miyazawa, is a professor and one of the leading legal sociologists in Japan. He buttresses his own observations with an extensive questionnaire survey of police attitudes. In preparing the English version, Miyazawa substantially revised the earlier work, supplementing it with background information essential to a foreign readership unfamiliar with Japanese law and with information on more recent developments. Despite the passage of nearly 20 years since Miyazawa's initial study, the fundamental features of Japanese criminal procedure law remain essentially unchanged. Miyazawa shows that the Japanese police engage in aggressive investigations, providing detailed real-life examples of the long and intensive interrogation of suspects which is a standard feature of actual Japanese criminal investigations, and supplements his own observations with descriptions of numerous scandals involving the police. According to Miyazawa, the internal incentive structure for the Japanese police favors aggressive investigations and condones procedural improprieties. Despite Miyazawa's emphasis on uncovering questionable activities by police detectives, however, his factual observations for the most part belie the image of a police force out of control. With criminal cases falling along a continuum from less serious crimes to more serious crimes, Miyazawa's case studies of the most serious crimes suggest that decisions on how to treat such cases are not made lightly. Regarding these cases, where the police conclude that they have no other choice, detectives are willing to bend the rules. In the great majority of cases, however, the police observe the existing procedural rules. Miyazawa's anecdotal evidence of aggressive investigations serve to highlight the dangers of bending the procedural rules. 69 footnotes