Japan's reputation as a "safe" country under threat

The White Paper on Crime, released by the Ministry of Justice in mid-November, revealed that the number of criminal acts that occurred in 2001 had broken postwar record for the sixth consecutive year, but that the rate of arrests has dropped sharply.

A total of about 3.58 million criminal acts were committed in 2001, up 10% over the previous year. The number has been increasing consistently since 1976, with a particularly sharp rise seen from 1996. The rate of arrests, meanwhile, was 38.8% for all criminal acts including traffic accidents, down 3.9% over the previous year. The arrest rate for general criminal offenses was 19.8%, dropping below 20% for the first time since the end of World War II. This arrest rate, when compared with that for major criminal acts made in Germany, France, the UK and the United States, is rapidly approaching that of the lowest-ranked United States for the first time since the survey was begun.

Although the arrest rate consistently remained above 60% throughout the 1980s, it dropped to 40% in 1990, and then plunged steeply to 20% in 2000. While the arrest rate for murder cases is still a high 94%, hat for theft is an extremely low 15.7%, reducing the overall figure. Although the number of burglaries increased dramatically to 23.6% over that of the previous year, the arrest rate fell to 48.7%, down 8.1% over the previous year.

Burglaries committed by foreign nationals living in Japan is increasing, although the total number is still very small. As for crimes using guns and small arms, the number of incidents in which these weapons were fired was 215, or 81 incidents more than the previous year. Likewise, the number of casualties was 39, or 16 more than the previous year.

These survey results strongly reflect our country's lingering recession and the globalization of our economy. The good news is that the number of crimes is still small compared with that seen in Europe and the United States. Nevertheless, the fall in arrest rates is a source of a vague feeling of anxiety, since it may be a sign that Japan's safe and peaceful society of today--whereby many rural residents do not even lock their houses, and where women living in big cities can walk the streets alone after dark and not feel scared--is changing.