{"id":135,"date":"2006-12-22T00:58:12","date_gmt":"2006-12-21T15:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=135"},"modified":"2012-11-23T09:37:05","modified_gmt":"2012-11-23T00:37:05","slug":"sunday-mainichi-on-foreign-crime-fearmongering-as-npa-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=135","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Mainichi on Foreign Crime Fearmongering as NPA policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Blog. SITYS. See I told you so. As far back as 2000 (when this whole thing started, really–Check out Chapter Three of my book JAPANESE ONLY<\/a>), I was saying that foreign crime was being artificially generated by policymakers in order to justify more budgetary outlay. Well, here’s an article on it from the Mainichi Daily News. Courtesy of Ben at The Community (thanks). Debito in Sapporo<\/p>\n

===========================
\nAuthor dismisses government’s fear mongering myth of crime wave by foreigners<\/strong><\/p>\n

MAINICHI DAILY NEWS December 21, 2006
\nhttp:\/\/mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp\/waiwai\/news\/20061221p2g00m0dm003000c.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Translating Sunday Mainichi article dated Dec 31, 2006, original version blogged here.<\/a><\/p>\n

For years, people like Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara have been up in
\narms about rising crime rates among foreigners and juveniles in Japan,
\nbut one of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s public safety experts
\nhas come out to say the claims are groundless, according to Sunday
\nMainichi (12\/31).<\/p>\n

Ishihara and his ilk have long laid the blame on foreigners for a
\nperceived worsening of public safety standards that has allowed the
\npowers that be to strengthen and crack down on non-Japanese and teens.<\/p>\n

But Hiroshi Kubo, the former head of the Tokyo Metropolitan
\nGovernment’s Emergency Public Safety Task Force, says they’ve got it
\nall wrong.<\/p>\n

“Put simply, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s public safety policy
\ninvolves telling people that public safety standards have worsened and
\npolice groups need strengthening to protect the capital’s residents,”
\nKubo tells Sunday Mainichi. “But I’ve realized there’s something
\nunnatural about this ‘worsening.'”<\/p>\n

In his newly released book, Kubo goes through the statistical data
\nbeing used to justify taking a hard line on foreigners and kids and
\nargues that maybe it’s not quite all there. For instance, the growing
\ncrime rate in Tokyo is based on reported crimes, not actual crime
\ncases. This means the count includes cases where people who have been
\nscared into believing their safety is under such a threat they contact
\nthe police for any trifling matter only to be sent away with no action
\ntaken.<\/p>\n

And taking a look back over the past 40 years shows that violent
\ncrimes by juveniles has actually declined. Current worries about how
\nyouths are becoming more criminally inclined — and at a younger age
\n— sound like a recording of similar cries dating back to the ’60s.<\/p>\n

Crimes by foreigners have long been highlighted, but there’s little to
\nsuggest that Tokyo or Japan is in the midst of a violent crime spree.
\nIn 2002, there were 102 non-Japanese arrested in Tokyo for violent
\ncrimes including murder, armed robbery, arson and rape. The following
\nyear, that number jumped to 156, fell back to 117 in 2004 and was just
\n84 in 2005. And the number of violent crimes foreigners are committing
\nin Tokyo is not a patch on the Japanese, who account for about 1,000
\ncases a year.<\/p>\n

Kubo says authorities are merely fear mongering, taking statistics
\nthat work in their favor and molding them to suit their purposes.
\nNational Police Agency data is used the same way as authorities are
\ndoing in Tokyo, spreading fear nationwide.<\/p>\n

“There’s an underlying current of anxiety throughout society. People
\nhave no idea what’s going to happen in the future, they’re worried
\nabout employment and pay and declining living standards and somebody
\nwho’s going to openly talk about the reason for their anxieties is
\ngoing to attract their interest,” the public safety expert tells
\nSunday Mainichi. “Say somebody comes out and says ‘foreigners’ violent
\ncrimes are all to blame’ then anxious people are going to go along
\nwith that. And the national government, prefectural governments,
\npolice and the media all jump on the bandwagon and believe what’s
\nbeing said.” (By Ryann Connell)<\/p>\n

December 21, 2006
\nENDS<\/p>\n

==========================
\nMore on how the police fudge the stats at<\/em><\/strong>
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/crimestats.html<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/TheCommunity\/communityissues.html#police<\/a>
\nENDS<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Blog. SITYS. See I told you so. As far back as 2000 (when this whole thing started, really–Check out Chapter Three of my book JAPANESE ONLY), I was saying that foreign crime was being artificially generated by policymakers in order to justify more budgetary outlay. Well, here’s an article on it from the Mainichi …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,14,13,11,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime","category-japanese-politics","category-media","category-problematic-foreign-treatment","category-sitys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}