Hi, readers from overseas!! Thanks for visiting us. I recommend you read this page FIRST, because some of your common sense is not similar to ours. You'd say "Geeeeeeeeez!!" "What????" "Why the earth does that happen?" after reading the contents below. This surprise will definitely make it easy for you to understand our activity. So now we'd like to explain the background Japanese society and how it affects adjudicated youths' life.
However, not all the Japanese think this way. It's just an analysis by Elio, the author of this page. I simply hope this will be a good chance for your further study, interest and understanding :)
(Notice)
I don't know well about all the countries in the world, but at least in the following aspects, I think Japanese society toward adjudicated youths differ from that of the United States.
I'm really glad if other countries' readers give me some information and your own view of "comparing with Japan" .
(Japanese Family)
Generally speaking, Japanese think family ought to maintain its members' good characters. Especially parents are supposed to supervise children. It makes almost no difference whether a child is a little one or a teenager.
When a child caused damage to some other person, parents at once go to them and say "I'm sorry my child did this" and in many cases compensate the damage voluntarily. This is done by parents of even 20-or-so years old children if they live with them and are economically dependent.
When it comes to the lawsuit, teenagers' parents often have to assume legal responsibility because they went against "duty of supervising their own children", thus judgment of a court says the parents should compensate for the damage caused by their child.
In this society, parents might tend to tell a child who did something against the law "You ex-convict, you disgraced us, you're nuisance to us, you brought shame on the family, look how your little brother's feel ashamed at school, they're bullied because of you,...." rather than "You made some mistake, but at least we're on your side. Try continue the effort to recover."
And of course this makes all the parents interfere in teenagers' usual life because it's their own responsibility to keep them in the right way, otherwise they'll have to suffer huge amount of social blame and compensations.
(Japanese Schools)
This is similar to the story about family. When a teenager commits a crime, soon TV reporters go to his/her school and blame the president. Newspapers' articles including contributions discuss the schools' responsibility of supervision.
But worse than families, schools always pretend not to know, take a strong attitude, try to hush up the affair.
We had an episode. 2 years ago we tried to start a telephone consultation service for teenagers and kids, because we thought it important to hear their troubles and worries and try something to prevent the children from becoming (be called) a "juvenile delinquents".
But the junior high schools refused our offer to distribute the brochures "because our students have no problem. They'd never be juvenile delinquents!!". We at last had to give up offering the service.
(Indulgent law, Strict people)
June 1997, a sensational report of 14-year-old boy killing a child in the neighborhood and putting his head in front of his school gate chilled up all Japan. A very hot dispute followed that the Juvenile Law was too indulgent because it abandons to judge children under 16 in an open court and inflict a punishment. This boy was sent to the Family Court (closed judgment) and after that, to a reformatory.
Maybe because of this law, people's attitudes are very harsh on the contrary. "There must be no human rights for assailants" kind of opinions are often heard (doesn't this make "human rights" concept meaningless??) Anyway most people lack the point of view "they finally will be back to the society and we have to think how they can change into the kind of people that meet the needs of the society". For me it seems that "ordinary people" are just trying to "exclude the abnormals".
(Summary)
BBS is willing & trying to bridge the gap between these actual situations and what is really needed for juvenile delinquents ;)