4 Enhanced supervision/custody by family and complementary support

Trust and good relationships between family members play extremely important roles in preventing repeat delinquencies/offenses, and parents play a significant role in suppressing juvenile delinquencies and youth crime both as their rehabilitation supporters and supervisors.

According to the results of the survey of the attitudes of juvenile delinquents and young offenders, approximately 70% of them listed their family as a mental brake that restrained them from committing offenses. However, the number of single parent households was increasing due to the recent rising trend in the divorce rate (Fig. 7-1-2), and examining the guardian status of juveniles newly admitted to juvenile training schools revealed that the proportion of biological mothers only was the highest (Fig. 7-2-3-9). According to the results of the special research, however, the status with visits to juvenile training schools made by relatives (Fig. 7-3-3-1-6) and continued living with guardians as supervisors (Fig. 7-3-3-3-14) tended to affect their subsequent criminal punishment status more significantly than the external characteristics of whether the guarantor at the time of the discharge on parole was their parents or not (Fig. 7-3-3-1-5), thus indicating the importance of the quality of family relationships in preventing repeat delinquencies/offenses.

For this reason, working with juveniles and their guardians, etc. in thereby improving their relationships and enhancing their guardians’ custodial abilities (See Subsection 2, Chapter 5 of this part) and making careful environmental adjustments, etc. before discharge/release are very important in the treatment of juvenile delinquents/young offenders. However, in many cases those that initially lived with their parents subsequently stopped living with them. In addition, there are cases where they don’t have any relative who can take care of them because of family problems, etc. or the guardians lack the ability to take custody of juveniles/youth. There is a limit of family members to foster the rehabilitation without support from outside of family, although rehabilitation supporters other than guardians are limited (Fig. 7-3-3-3-15). Expanding/improving a circle of support from rehabilitation volunteers, including volunteer probation officers, supportive employers, the Women’s Association for Rehabilitation Aid, and the BBS associations, etc., is therefore considered important.