3 Injury/assault (identification and differentiated treatment of occasional offenders and habitual offenders)

  As described above, unlike elderly theft offenders, regarding elderly injury/assault offenders, the ratio of those with previous imprisonment records is low, they were not necessarily isolated, many of them did not have serious financial uncertainties, quite a few of them committed violent acts against strangers, and some were affected by their expanding range of activities and interpersonal relationships. In addition, compared to non-elderly injury/assault offenders, some cases of elderly injury/assault offenders are affected by their relationships with neighbors.
  Those who had no previous convictions and committed injury/assault accidentally for the first time at an elderly age are included in these cases. Measures to prevent such offenses should be taken in the form of crime prevention education in community instead of merely punishing them, such as education that provides guidance on how to spend their spare time and on interpersonal relationship skills. That is, instead of presuming that elderly already have acquired good senses and no education/guidance is needed, it needs to be frankly acknowledged that there are some mentally/socially dependent persons, even at an elderly age, who cannot control themselves properly or whose such abilities have weakened due to aging. For those who repeatedly get into trouble due to drinking or with neighbors and will possibly commit offenses, measures to guide/educate them in their community lives should be considered.
  In addition, although the number is not large, some elderly injury/assault offenders are highly habitual, such as those repeating violent offenses while drinking against strangers in public areas. The majority of them did have previous convictions and quite a few of them were homeless or had no stable residence. As discussed in the White Paper on Crime 2007, injury/assault offenders tend to be sentenced to fines, even for repeat offenses. Hence the effectiveness of fines may be in question in these cases and more flexible sentencing needs to be elaborated from the viewpoint of recidivism prevention. For such cases, sentencing with probationary supervision should be elaborated with the aim to assure rehabilitation and reintegration into society, and so that they can be provided with education on the damage by alcohol and treatment to help them acquire the ability to control their feelings.