Producing and Practicing “Scientism” in the Juvenile Justice System

Abstract

This article aims to elucidate the activities of juvenile court probation officers that enabled the philosophy of scientism to reify in Japan in the early 1950s. The current juvenile law was enacted in postwar Japan, and the juvenile court was constituted in 1949. The current juvenile justice system institutes a juvenile court probation officer and technical officials at juvenile detention centers. These personnel are required to explore the causes of delinquency and estimate the potential of juvenile delinquents to re-offend and be transformed into socially responsible individuals and rehabilitated in the future by using their expertise in human sciences. However, the juvenile justice system has been criticized for lacking the spirit, detailed procedure, and material knowledge of the philosophy of scientism. The researchers of this paper have developed a method of calculating the potential of juvenile delinquents to re-offend, improve, and rehabilitate by utilizing sociological knowledge. The results of the analysis revealed that the juvenile court probation officers should ascertain the discrepancies between criminal law and folk characteristics and should rationalize acts by categorizing juvenile delinquents as members of rural communities (e.g., Wakasyū). This categorization enabled officials to predict the possibilities of juvenile delinquents improving and rehabilitating and their likelihood of re-offending in the future.