"The Claims of Survivors of Juvenile Crime over the Amendment of the Juvenile Act"
OTANI Michitaka
last update: 20151225
The Claims of Survivors of Juvenile Crime over the Amendment of the Juvenile Act
OTANI Michitaka
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to describe claims made by survivors of juvenile crime during the amendment of
the Juvenile Act from 1993 to 2000.
The Juvenile Act of the Japanese government was amended in 2000 for the first time since it was established
in 1949. During the amendment process, survivors of juvenile crime made appeals through the mass media for
amending the Juvenile Act. The most vocal juvenile crime survivors were Shouhei Kodama, Mamoru Hase and
Ruriko Take. This paper describes the claims of these three survivors.
These survivors appealed for providing crime victims with information about the details of their cases and
the progress of them through the juvenile court system, and they called for prolonging juvenile custody and
supervision periods and increasing punishments for major crimes.
In this paper, first, I describe the process of amending the Juvenile Act from 1993 to 2000. Next, I describe the
appeals by the three survivors of juvenile crime for amending the Juvenile Act.
Keywords: survivor, Juvenile Act amendment, crime victim, juvenile delinquent
REV: 20151225