# Special Feature: The Changing Investigative Environment and Police Initiatives

## Preface

Revisions to the post-war police system placed responsibility for the first right of independent investigation on the police, which came to bear the duty of executing investigations for Japanese citizens. Since then, police investigations have not only fulfilled the role of properly and swiftly applying and implementing penal laws in criminal justice proceedings, but they also have come to play an important role in executing responsibilities and duties of the police that protect the life, physical body and property of an individual and maintain public safety and order. To fulfill this role, the police have strived to enhance and strengthen their investigative abilities to accommodate changing trends in the state of criminal affairs.

Certain improvements in the crime situation can be seen, including a steady decline in the number of confirmed criminal offenses after peaking in 2002, as well as an improvement in the crime-clearance ratio for serious crimes such as murder and robbery since 2002. On the other hand, police investigations are encountering serious issues that include the fact that there has been a significant drop in the past 20 years in the number of clearances of larceny, which is a representative offense that facilitates feelings of anxiety about public security among Japanese citizens, and that the total damage for special fraud, such as remittance fraud, is the highest it has ever been.

Against the backdrop of such issues, there are changes in the environment involving police investigations stemming from changes to social conditions and system reforms. The advancement of an ageing society and shifts in family compositions resulting in an increase in the number of single households have weakened human relations in regional communities and made it difficult to obtain important information through traditional investigative police methods such as canvassing. In addition, although the spread of new services such as mobile phones and the Internet have greatly contributed to improving convenience in citizens' lives and economic activities, these services make tracking criminals difficult because of their improper use. Furthermore, changes are being forced on the very modality of police investigations centering on interrogations due to changes in the court system and its application in accordance with a series of reforms to the judicial system.

Therefore, the police are working to secure traceability linking traces of crimes and criminals, and promoting initiatives for thoroughly gathering objective evidence and conducting proper validation through efforts that include ensuring the cooperation of private businesses and improving utilization/systemization of technology. The police are also reviewing measures that would change the approach to police investigation, such as adopting audiovisual recordings in interrogations and new investigative methods.

In this special feature, Section 1 outlines criminal affairs and issues in investigation. Section 2 touches on changes in the social landscape and system reforms that are impacting police investigations, and Section 3 presents police initiatives in response to these changes. Section 4 introduces overseas investigative methods, while Section 5 introduces the results of a household survey on police investigations and takes a look at the future state of police investigations.

The state of police investigations in the future is closely related to the role the police should play in ensuring the safety and security of Japanese citizens, and consequently, is closely related to public security in Japan in the future. Hopefully, this special feature will help people to deepen understanding of police investigations in Japan and think about public security going forward.