            
 |
|
|
The Japanese Police System Today: A Comparative Study
|
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
Comments/Reviews
Description: In all major categories of crime, statistics show clearly that Japan has dramatically lower crime rates than the United States. How can this be accounted for, considering that Japan's population is as urbanized, industrialized, and sophisticated as those of the most advanced Western nations?
One of the major factors is the very different way that the Japanese police system is viewed and operates compared with police in the U.S. This study examines those differences through direct observation of Japanese police practices combines with interviews of Japanese police officials, criminal justice practitioners, legal scholars, and private citizens. Written by a teaching criminologist, it compares many Japanese police practices side by side with U.S. police practices, and places the role of the police in the broader cultural and historical Japanese framework.
Selected Contents:
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
1. Overview: Crime in Japan and the United States
2. The Historical and Legal Framework
Dispute Resolution
Historical Trends
Neighborhood Associations
The Suppression of Radicals
Policing after World War II
3. Overview of Police
Introduction
4. Koban Police
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department
The Tsukiji Police Station
Guns in Japan and the United States
Emergency Calls
The Role of Women
Interview Tactics at Police Boxes
Policing Tokyo's Outlying Areas: Shitaya, Seijo, Akabane, Motofuji, and Sanya
The Shitaya Police Station
The Seijo Police Station
The Akabane Police Station
The Motofuji Police Station
Policing Sanya
5. Attitudes of the Police Toward Their Work
Street Police
How They Become Interested
Police Crimes
Problems and Future Prospects
Police Administrators
6. The Hokkaido and Okayama Prefectural Police Forces
The Hokkaido Setting
Policing Hokkaido
The Chuzai-san
Profile of a Chuzai-san
Visits to other Chuzaisho in Hokkaido
The Okayama Prefectural Police
The Ikayama-Higashi Police Station
The Okayama-Nishi Police Station
Visit to a Okayama Chuzaisho
The Railway Police
7. The Investigation of Crime
Financial and Computer Related Crime
Violence
The Role of the Public Prosecutor
8. Courts, Corrections, and Probation
Courts and the Trial Process
Imprisonment
Probation, Parole, and Community-based Treatment
9. Crime By Foreigners
Overview and Role of the Media
10. Crisis With Youth
Overview
Bosozoku
The Kobe Murders
Violence against Teachers and Authority Figures
Dropping Out and Truancy
Juvenile Counseling Centers
Alcohol and Drug Abuse among Teens
The Family Court
Conclusion
11. The Police and the Community
Family Counseling
Suicide
Living on the Edge--Day Workers, the Homeless, Prostitutes, and Social Welfare Recipients
Crime Prevention
Private Security
Changes in Public Opinion toward the Police
Comments from Scholars and Criminal Justice Professionals
Public Opinion and Survey Data 1970s and 1980s
Comments and Survey Data in 2000
Dissidents, Radicals, and the Police
The Aum Shinrikyo Sect
Organized Crime
12. Conclusion
Lessons from Japan
References
Index
Review(s): All levels and collections. Choice
... an important contribution to the otherwise thin literature of explicitly comparative police system studies. ... Parker's text is notable for its breadth of coverage. He offers an excellent methodological review which should be requierd reading for students expecting to do fieldwork in Japan. ... Parker's work remains one of the few texts which can be used profitably as a primer to the Japanese police system or as a text within a school course on international or comparative criminal justice issues. The Journal of Asian Studies
...the book is comprehensive and engaging. ... an insightful and informative look at an integral part of Japanese society. Pacific Affairs
    
|