You may have seen on the news a new slew of programs on “foreigner crime”. It’s periodical–the National Police Agency spoon feeding the media every six months or so with new “foreigner crime” statistics, and special shows doubling as public-service announcements to appraise the public on how to avoid hordes of foreign criminals. <\/p>\n
Some historical examples of how the NPA has finagled statistics and manufactured crime waves at
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/japantimes100402.html
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/opportunism.html
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/foreigncrimeputsch.html
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/TheCommunity\/ihtasahi121502.html
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/japantimes033004.html
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/NPAracialprofiling.html
\nhttps:\/\/www.debito.org\/TheCommunity\/communityissues.html#police<\/p>\n
This time around, however, there’s been a snag–in that “Chinese Criminal DNA” proponent Tokyo Governor Ishihara’s former deputy chief has even come forward to call all the grandstanding an exaggeration.<\/p>\n
ARTICLE BEGINS
\n\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/p>\n
Ex-deputy of Tokyo Gov. Ishihara cries foul over ‘safe town’ campaign
\nBy Kakumi Kobayashi
\n(Original link unavailable, apologies)<\/p>\n
TOKYO, Aug. 24 Kyodo – A former deputy chief of Tokyo Gov. Shintaro
\nIshihara’s task force on public safety is questioning some of the projects
\nthe metropolitan government has been promoting to that end.<\/p>\n
Hiroshi Kubo, who released a book titled ”Is Public Safety Really
\nDeteriorating?” in June, said such measures could make people excessively
\nwary, encourage prejudice against foreigners and benefit those in authority
\nlike the police. The Japanese-language book is titled ”Chian wa Hontouni
\nAkkashiteirunoka” in Japanese.<\/p>\n
Some analysts say these concerns are entirely reasonable and have
\nurged authorities to work harder to get rid of factors threatening public
\norder, such as the widening income disparity, instead of simply telling
\npeople to brace themselves for possible crimes.<\/p>\n
Kubo, 59, was a senior bureaucrat in the Tokyo government. He led
\nvarious crime prevention projects as a division chief in charge of public
\nsafety in the governor’s headquarters from August 2003 to March 2005, when
\nhe quit the municipality.<\/p>\n
Kubo said he felt ”embarrassed” when he involved himself in or led
\nprojects he said were aimed at prompting people to think the community was
\nbecoming more and more dangerous and to rely on the authorities, especially
\nthe police, to deal with the situation.<\/p>\n
The ”safe town” campaign helps boost various businesses related to
\ncrime prevention and create new entities and government affiliations.<\/p>\n
”It means police officers and police bureaucrats can get more
\n‘amakudari’ posts,” Kubo said, referring to the Japanese business practice
\nwhereby current and retired bureaucrats land jobs in entities the
\ngovernment oversees or is closely related to.<\/p>\n
He said he wrote the book hoping it would cause people to have second
\nthoughts about what the authorities try to promote ”in a more level-headed
\nmanner.”<\/p>\n
Ensuring public safety was a key pledge Ishihara made before he was
\nreelected for a fresh four-year term as Tokyo governor in April 2003.<\/p>\n
The Tokyo government boosted its budget for crime prevention projects
\nnearly 30-fold to 8.7 billion yen in the fiscal year which began in April
\n2004.<\/p>\n
The money financed projects such as those aimed at watching
\nnon-Japanese more closely and installing security cameras in public spaces.<\/p>\n
The local government encourages people to form patrol teams to find
\n”suspicious persons” in the neighborhood, buy goods to protect children
\nfrom possible attackers and receive crime alerts that local authorities
\nsend to individuals’ cell phones.<\/p>\n
A 2004 government survey indicated 87 percent of Japanese felt public
\nsafety had deteriorated in the past decade. Behind the concern were reports
\nof a spate of illegal acts committed by youths and foreigners who
\noverstayed their visas, the poll suggested.<\/p>\n
Analysts say people have become much more wary since the school
\nrampage in an elementary school in Osaka Prefecture in 2001 when a
\nknife-wielding man entered the school premises and randomly killed eight
\nchildren in front of their friends and teachers in broad daylight.<\/p>\n
Kubo also questioned the rhetoric Japanese authorities indulge in when
\nwarning people against crimes committed by non-Japanese.<\/p>\n
An annual report by the National Police Agency in fiscal 2005 said the
\npolice in 2004 cracked down on 21,842 foreign visitors to Japan over
\nalleged illicit acts, up 9.2 percent from a year earlier, in 47,128 cases,
\nup 16 percent.<\/p>\n
The total number of foreigners who entered Japan in the year also rose
\n18 percent to 6.757 million.<\/p>\n
Kubo indicated it is obvious that the ratio of people breaking the law
\nin any given group increases as the size of that group grows. The figures
\nin the police report do not mean that non-Japanese are in general more
\nlikely to commit crimes compared with Japanese, he said.<\/p>\n
”But the authorities tried to highlight only one side of what such
\nfigures suggest,” Kubo said. ”I’m not saying such crimes are not
\nincreasing…But it is wrong to easily say people in this category are good
\nand those in that category are bad.”<\/p>\n
Criminologist Koichi Hamai doubts that people’s concerns about
\nsuburban crimes really originate from their own experiences.<\/p>\n
A recent survey by a team headed by the professor at Ryukoku
\nUniversity’s Graduate School of Law suggested over 90 percent of people
\npolled said they feel crimes have increased in the past two years
\nnationwide.<\/p>\n
But when asked if they feel similarly about their own neighborhood,
\nthe ratio of people saying so sank to 27 percent, while 64 percent said
\n”unchanged.”<\/p>\n
The 2004 government survey also indicated 84 percent of people became
\ninterested in public safety because ”TV and newspapers often cover” the
\ntopic, far outnumbering the second most common answer — that the issue has
\nbecome a topic of conversation with relatives and friends — at 30 percent.<\/p>\n
Hamai urged the government to boost measures to help people who once
\ncommitted offenses but are trying to return to society as part of efforts
\nto prevent crimes.<\/p>\n
Much research has indicated that although Japan’s economy is showing
\nsigns of recovery, the gap in people’s incomes and wealth has widened and a
\nbelief that only the strong survive has spread under Prime Minister
\nJunichiro Koizumi, who took office in 2001.<\/p>\n
Hamai said, for example, that many youths have more difficulties
\nlanding jobs after leaving reformatory institutions than in the past.<\/p>\n
”It leads to an increase in repeat offenders…That’s a sign of
\ndanger. Inaction by the government could really cause public safety to
\ndeteriorate,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sociologist Kazuya Serizawa said a change in public reactions to
\nheinous crimes targeting children, especially after the 2001 school
\nincident, suggests many Japanese communities have become more guarded than
\nin the past.<\/p>\n
”In the past, people discussed what was behind the emergence of such
\na cruel culprit or said ‘We may have to review the problems in our
\ncommunity’ even though they were shocked,” the tutor at Kyoto University
\nof Art and Design said.<\/p>\n
”But recently, people immediately talk about how they can kick
\nsuspicious people out of the community…It seems difficult to stop this
\ntrend,” he said.<\/p>\n
==Kyodo
\nARTICLE ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hiroshi Kubo, who released a book titled ”Is Public Safety Really Deteriorating?” in June, said such measures could make people excessively wary, encourage prejudice against foreigners and benefit those in authority like the police…<\/p>\n
Some analysts say these concerns are entirely reasonable and have urged authorities to work harder to get rid of factors threatening public order, such as the widening income disparity, instead of simply telling people to brace themselves for possible crimes.<\/p>\n
Kubo, 59, was a senior bureaucrat in the Tokyo government. He led various crime prevention projects as a division chief in charge of public safety in the governor’s headquarters from August 2003 to March 2005, when he quit the municipality.<\/p>\n
Kubo said he felt ”embarrassed” when he involved himself in or led projects he said were aimed at prompting people to think the community was becoming more and more dangerous and to rely on the authorities, especially the police, to deal with the situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,4,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","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=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}