Chapter 6  Conclusion

Section 1  Cause and Background of Increase in Elderly Offenders

1 Characteristics of recent elderly offenders revealed by special research, etc.

  As shown earlier, the number of elderly offenders in each procedural stage is increasing at a higher rate than the growth of the total elderly population (see Fig. 7-1-2). The number of elderly cleared/prosecuted and the elderly rates all increased for serious offenses including homicide and robbery, offenses of a violent nature including injury, assault, and intimidation, property offenses such as theft and fraud, and sexual offenses including forcible indecency (see Chapter 2, Section 1 and Section 2). In addition to penal code offences, elderly offenders who had committed special act offenses (Waste Disposal Act violations, Firearms and Swords Control Act violations, etc.) accounted for a large part of the number of persons convicted, as revealed by the the research based on computerized criminal records.
  The special research described in Chapter 3, Section 2, which analyzed the attributes of elderly offenders received by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office and the Tokyo Local Public Prosecutors Office in 2007, revealed that quite a few elderly offenders have high criminal tendencies, with a number of elderly offenders having been repeating offenses before becoming elderly and then committing offenses again at an elderly age, and with those having been convicted previously (“group of offenders with previous dispositions”) accounting for 1/3 of the total research subjects. On the other hand, those who had committed offenses for the first time at an elderly age (“group of elderly first-time offenders”) accounted for 1/4 of the total research subjects.
  The reasons for the increase in number of elderly offenders are discussed below.