Raising the Statutory Penalty Limits and Legislative Policy (Symposium: Reexamination of Policy-Making Processes in Recent Legislations and Policies on Criminal Justice: Based on the Idea of Evidence-Based Policy)

Abstract

On December 1,2004, the House of Councilors enacted a law amending the Penal Code of Japan and other related acts. This was the first major amendment of the Penal Code since its enactment in 1907. The main point of the amendments was to raise the statutory penalty limits (i.e., the maximum or minimum sentence set forth in the penal rules for each crime) in response to legislative policy aimed at preventing crime. According to the Ministry of Justice, the amendments result from three primary factors recognized by the legislative branch: (1) a changing sense of justice; (2) an increasing crime rate; and (3) the severity of sentencing. These factors are all based on statistical evidence. In this paper, the author examines the record of the Legislative Council of the Ministry of Justice to determine whether these three primary legislative factors are based on sound empirical evidence. The conditions of raising the statutory penalty limits are also discussed from a viewpoint of evidence-based policy.