Japan has enjoyed the reputation for being one of the most crime-free economically advanced countries. However, since the late 1990s, with constantly increasing recorded crime rate and dropping clearance rate in police statistics, it appears that the Japanese public has lost confidence in its safety and the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. In the general election of 2003, the crime problem was a central issue. For, the first time since WWII, major political parties proposed various measures to control crime, such as installing more CCTV, putting more police officers on the streets, and longer sentences for offenders. A Cabinet Office survey of public attitudes also showed that the proportion of the public who thought crime was getting worse had increased from 18.8% in 1998 to 39.5% in 2004. This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, I examine crime and related statistics, to investigate whether public perceptions are based on sound evidence. I found that in terms of crime statistics, in the late 1990s, there was a series of police scandals in Japan that fundamentally changed the way the press reported policing issues. Such changes provoked key policy changes toward the reporting and recording of crime. This in turn resulted in a sudden increase in the number of crimes recorded, and a sudden decrease in the clear up rates. The moral panic, which I call here as 'the myth of a collapsing safe society', created by the press coverage of crime statistics. In the second part of the paper, I examine how the myth of a collapsing safe society has been created and maintained by analyzing the disparity between press coverage of murder and actual number of murder, and the role of victim support movements.

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This article evaluates alternative explanations for the new laws and practices that have made the United States the world's leader in mass imprisonment. Explanations that attribute the new punitiveness to either a worsening crime problem or an increasingly outraged and vengeful public are each found to be faulty. Instead, the authors argue, the new punitiveness reflects the success of conservative politicians in reframing a number of social problems, including crime, drugs, and poverty, as consequences of permissiveness rather than deprivation. Their efforts in this regard began in the 1960s in response to the demands of the American civil rights movement and continued in the 1980s as part of a campaign to steer state policy away from social welfare in favor of national security. In the 1990s, politicians from both major parties joined in advocating "wars" on crime and drugs. Mass imprisonment, however, has proved enormously costly and damaging to poor families and communities. In recent years, efforts to reconsider tough-on-crime laws have gained ground, and the climate is ripening for a return to policies of greater moderation.

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This paper examines the cognitive structure and causes of perceived risk and fear of crime among urban residents in Tokyo. The questionnaire survey of 3,120 residents was conducted in 104 neighborhoods in Oota city, Tokyo. The respondents were requested to rate separately subjective perceived risk and emotional fear of crime for 12 crime types. Incivility and direct/indirect victimization were also measured. Confirmative factor analysis supported the two-factor structure of property and personal crime, similar to one proposed in the U.S. It is notable that this cognitive structure does not match the conventional law-enforcement classification. That is, the respondents judge several property crimes such as Akisu, breaking and entering while residents are out of house, to be both personal and property crime. The authors also examine the effects of victimization, incivility and target attractiveness on perceived risk and fear of crime. Generally, incivility and direct/indirect victimization raise fear of crime, mediated by perceived risk. In addition, incivility directly causes fear of property crime as well as mediation by perceived risk. Direct victimization has more significant effects than indirect victimization. A respondent who owns more consumer durables tends to perceive more risk of property crime, whereas one with more vulnerable family members are more fearful of personal crime. Policy implications to control fear of crime are also discussed.

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It seems that any research on crime and criminal justice in Japan has had no significant influence on policy makers. However, recently, the newly established law requires all government agencies to evaluate their own adapted policies and their performance. This change could provide researchers good opportunities to conduct evaluation research on government programs. To discuss more effective way to create a safer community, I believe that we need a new and more integrated field of research beyond traditional knowledge, which can be called Safe Community Policy. This paper will introduce a basic idea of Safe Community Policy and also address my expectation to the researchers, as one of the administrators in police service.

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How can democracies prevent crime without causing crime? How can they avoid wasting money on programs that sound good but have no effect? How can they make decisions based on rational analysis, rather than on emotional impulses? These problems afflict all democracies, regardless of culture or history. They may also have a common solution in evidence-based government. This article reviews the concept of evidence-based government and its DRIVER model, as well as the standards of evidence for different kinds of questions about crime prevention. Using these standards, it suggests that while randomized controlled trials are needed for only a small portion of the evidence in crime prevention, RCTs in each country are indispensable in order to keep programs from causing more crime than they prevent. The leadership of advanced nations is needed to move RCTs forward to a more rational framework for crime prevention policy.

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From flooded literature Meadow considered it has been used most as the criteria of MSBP: (1)Illness in a child which is fabricated by a parent, or someone who is in loco parentis. (2)The child is presented for medical assessment and care, usually persistently, often resulting in multiple medical procedures. (3)The perpetrator denies the aetiology of the child's illness. (4) Acute symptoms and signs of illness cease when the child is separated from the perpetrator (Meadow 1995). As meadow himself admitting, those criteria is lack of specificity and they has led to confusion for the medical, social work, and legal professions. This paper discusses the characteristics and significance of the concept of MSBP as a medical syndrome, and traces the influence it has on finding factual evidence. As the result of those discussions, the authors found that MSBP concept is useful to have in the clinical aspect where practitioners discovered hidden child abuse. In the aspect of criminal fact findings, fact finder may make reference to MSBP evidences not as dispositive fact but one of the indirect evidences. In the nature as medical syndromes about child abuse, the evidence of medical witness about MSBP is inadmissible when it inescapably bears solely on proving that a crime occurred.

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This paper endeavors to explain how the social bond with school can control deviant behavior. Positing that a "social bond can enhance sensitivity and norm awareness, resulting in controlling deviant behavior", the role of school in controlling deviant behaviors was researched by giving a questionnaire to 385 high school girls in February, 2002. The results of this survey can be summarized in the following five findings 1. The preposition that a social bond can enhance sensitivity and norm awareness, resulting in controlling control deviant behaviors is not negated. However the converse relationship of sensitivity and norm awareness to building a social bond is also not negated. 2. The preposition that through the bond with negative friends who commit deviant behavior, deviant norm is adopted, resulting in worsening deviant is not negated. However the converse relationship of deviant norm awareness to creating a bond with negative friends is also not negated. 3. The effect of a bond with instructors on controlling deviant behavior is enormous; representing the strongest controlling effect among all school-related factors affecting the behavioral attitude of students. 4. The effect of a bond with friends on controlling deviant behavior cannot be observed from the available data. 5. The preposition that commitment to school activities, primarily such as learning, can enhance sensitivity as well as norm awareness of concerns that degrade school, turns out to control deviant behaviors is not negated. However, the converse relationship of sensitivity and norm awareness building commitment to school activities is also not negated.

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