This study examined workplace thefts (N＝292) involving primarily the theft of money, committed in the Hokuriku region (Toyama, Ishikawa, and Fukui prefectures) over the past decade for offender profiling. The results showed that the most frequent thieves were Japanese (98％), men (62％), unmarried (64％), and without a prior criminal record of theft (71％). The use of categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis resulted in the categorization of these thieves into the following three types. The “Store proceeds target” thieves (n＝125) stole takings from registers in the convenience stores, were mostly unmarried and active male employees, did not commit the theft with co-offenders. The “Employee money target” thieves (n＝123) generally stole the money from co-workers’ wallets in the locker rooms or break rooms of companies, factories, hospitals, and so on; they were mostly female active employees without co-offenders. The “Money and goods target” burglaries (n＝44) had a tendency to steal wallets or portable safes in the business offices of companies, factories, restaurants, and so on; such thefts were committed mostly by unmarried men who were former employees and had criminal record(s) of theft. The above results showed the possibility of offender profiling for workplace thefts in Japan.

A case study of a female offender who started shoplifting in her late fifties is analyzed. The woman did not shoplift for economic reasons. Moreover, her shoplifting was not classified as kleptomania based on DSM-5 criteria, but as addictive-compulsive stealing, a concept presented by Shulman (2004). She could resist her impulses but failed to resist addictive, compulsive urges to steal objects, lived under tension and felt pleasure after rather than during shoplifting. Her shoplifting was a means of acting out anger and making life fair. When she was approaching her late adulthood, she began to confront the eighth stage of crisis; integrity vs. despair in Erikson’s psychosocial development stages. She looked back on her life and felt that her life had been obstructed by external factors instead of having a feeling of satisfaction. Shoplifting was a temporary diversion from these feelings. She did not look directly at her crimes and felt shame at her public arrest. It was considered necessary to intervene in her mental condition to deter her from reoffending. It is suggested that retelling her acceptable life-story through narrative therapy would maintain the stability of her mental state.

The purpose of this study was to examine mental representations with respect to child abuse and neglect. In particular, we focused on whether child maltreatment is more strongly associated with being a crime or a welfare issue. Study I included 220 university students and 44 correctional experts. They were made to rate the extent to which five practical psychologies were related to five child clinical issues. Multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) showed that (1) child maltreatment posited between Psychology for Human Services (PHS) and Forensic and Criminal Psychology (FCP) in university students, and (2) child abuse and neglect was close to PHS in correctional experts. Study II consisted of 46 university students who were measured twice, before and after a lecture regarding child abuse and neglect. Individual analysis of the MDS results revealed that knowledge about child maltreatment could make PHS closer to but remain the closest between FCP and child abuse and neglect. Study III included 197 university students who were required to select the better procedure (social welfare or forensic) for maltreated children. We found that they reported significantly more of the former than the latter and concluded that university students have a mental representation of child abuse and neglect being a crime, not a welfare issue.