Year: 2012
Type: dissertation
Abstract: argue likely had the effect of dissuading potential researchers from going down what would have appeared to be a dead end.As a result, my approach to answering the question of why Japan has such a low crime rate makes ample use of what there is an abundance of information on: Japan's culture.By analyzing Japan's culture in conjunction with the available literature, I was able to synthesize an argument that the low crime rate is due to strong interpersonal relationships and the lack of diversity within the Japanese population.The former enables Japanese people to shame and pressure members of their groups into behaving in a socially-acceptable manner, and the latter allows individuals to relate well to one another and encourages them to work together toward the common goal of controlling crime.I develop these social controls from a form culturally specific to the Japanese to a generic one that can be remodeled to fit other cultures.And, in perhaps the most valuable contribution of my work, I was able to utilize cultural and historical information to respond to the scholars who argued that the low crime and suicide rates were related.Japan, as the country with the lowest crime rate, ought to provide an appealing subject for the study of criminal justice and criminological scholars, but few have accepted the challenge and the state of the literature is growing evermore dismal as the most important studies age out of relevance.It is my hope that a response to the suicide issue, like the one I have given, which identifies the oversight made in some of the previous works, will help to breakdown whatever reluctance researchers maintain.Ideally, as scholars realize there are lessons to be learned from Japan, the next few years will witness fewer papers like my own and an increase in the number of scientific studies investigating the Japanese crime rate.
Author: Roxanne Reese
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2232379171