A Consideration of Police Assistance for Child Abuse : On Article 10 of the Child Abuse Prevention Act that was revised on 2004

Abstract

There has been an increasingly high social recognition of child abuse since the Child Abuse Prevention Act of 2000 went into effect. On the other hand, it has been indicated that there are still many serious child abuse case including the cases causing to death. Child abuse is still a crucial social problem, which should be solved urgently because of the impact of the above mentioned problem. Because of such a crucial social situation as the above mentioned, the Child Abuse Prevention Act was revised in part on April 14, 2004. The revised parts of the new act are the followings! to reinforce the function of preventing child abuse, to clarify of the definition of child abuse, to strengthen the function of obligation responsibility of the national government as well as local governments, to enlarge the sphere of information obligation, and to maintain relevant rules for the protection of children and their security. Upon the revision of the Child Abuse Prevention Act, there were many provisional problems. That is, most debated issue of the Child Abuse Prevention Act was of an on-the-spot investigation. The article 10 of the Child Abuse Prevention Act provides that a chief staff at the child consultation center must demand police officers to participate in a site which should be investigated by the workers of the child consultation centers, if necessary to do so. This paper is written on the basis of the Japanese Diet journal on which I have found various opinions that are collected through interviews and discussions with the Diet members as well as many bureaucrats of the Police Department and the Minister of Justice regarding how police assistance for an on-the-spot investigation should be.