It is well known that being unemployed can become an offense promotion factor. For example, with sentenced inmates admitted to penal institutions in 2005, in the case of those who had been imprisoned before, 27.8% of them were employed at the time of offense, while 70.6% of them were unemployed at the time of the offense (Source: Annual Report of Statistics on Correction). Also, with the persons who had their probation/parole supervision terminated, the ratio of those whose supervision was terminated by revocation (revocation of probation, revocation of parole or suspension of execution of sentence), those who were returned to juvenile training school or those whose supervision was terminated with custody, was 7.3% for those employed, while 39.6% for those unemployed, which is more than 5 times (Source: The Rehabilitation Bureau, Ministry of Justice, 2005). The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Ministry of Justice therefore started a comprehensive job assistance scheme for persons released from prison, etc. in order to secure work for sentenced inmates, inmates in juvenile training schools, persons subject to probation/parole supervision and persons subject to urgent aftercare, and thus aid in their reformation and rehabilitation. This system is the first comprehensive full-scale cooperative measure between ministries and agencies in Japan with the aim of preventing recidivism through job assistance, with support of vocational counsel, job introductions, provision of information on recruitment, etc. cooperatively provided by public employment support offices, penal institutions, juvenile training schools and probation offices. Staff members from public employment support offices visit and provide penal institutions with employment guide books, besides giving lectures on employment and providing vocational counseling. Probation offices are, with the cooperation of public employment support offices, making use of a trial employment system, and have newly set up an identity guarantee system for the persons who start employment under this system, and so on, further seeking further cooperation.
  In addition, since 2007, high school equivalency examinations have been conducted in cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture at penal institutions and juvenile training schools, for getting the inmates with no high school diplomas to take the examination leads to increasing their options at the time of entering higher-level education and employment, contributing to their reform/rehabilitation and return to society (see Section 2, 2 of this Chapter).