Juvenile Justice in the U.S. and Japan

In the United States, the public and politicians alike perceive a significant and frightening increase in youth crime and violence; concerns about the capacity of the juvenile justice system to rehabilitate chronic and violent youthful offenders while simultaneously protecting public safety accompany the growing fear of youth crime (Feld, 1999). In Japan, where the juvenile justice system has been characterized as incorporating Franco-Germano-American ingredients (Kitamura, 1993), juvenile crime is substantially less than in the United States. The official murder rates per 100,000 population in Japan, and the official theft rates in that country are one-sixth and one-fourth those of the United States, respectively; similarly, juvenile crimes rates are less than 50 percent in most categories in Japan than those reported in the United States (Tanioka, 1991).

Given these differentials, the purpose of this report is to compare the effectiveness of the juvenile justice system in Japan and the United States. The report will offer a review of relevant literature as a foundation for qualitative analysis of the two juvenile justice systems under examination. A methods section, along with a description of the limits inherent in such a study, will be presented. Discussion, recommendations, and conclusions will be provided.

It will be argued herein that in Japan, juvenile delinquency rates are less than in the United

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enile Justice in Japan. Haley (1998) has commented that except for moderate increases in the early 1980s, Japan has increased a steady decline in the number of penal code offenses and a steady decrease in the actual number of offenders remanded to courts. With respect to juvenile delinquency and criminality, Haley (1998) has pointed out that Japanese judges and prosecutors stress correction as a primary aim and function under an ethos which he labels as benevolent paternalism. Roughly one-third of all juvenile cases involving criminal code offenses are suspended and not prosecuted, with confession and repentance and compensation emphasized as compelling grounds for refusing to prosecute a criminal of any age who admits responsibility. Additionally, Haley (1998) claims that victim-offender mediation is stressed in the Japanese juvenile justice system. The best source for information on the Japanese juvenile system identified in the research for this report was found on the Internet (www.JCPS.ab.psiweb.com), which presented statistics from Japan's Annual Report of Judicial Statistics. This site provides the following description of juveniles adjudicated by family court according to offense. Table III Japanese Juvenile Offens
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Approximate Word count = 3220
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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