Asian Journal of Criminology最新文献

This study investigated the social psychological characteristics of group violence in crime using Japanese data. Two main hypotheses were examined: (1) crimes committed by groups, particularly larger groups, are more violent than those committed by individuals and (2) juvenile violent crimes are more likely to involve groups than adult violent crimes. Study 1 analyzed police agency crime statistical data and found that group crimes were more violent than individual crimes, with the level of violence increasing with group size. Additionally, juvenile crimes involved larger group sizes on average than adult crimes. Study 2 involved a quantitative text analysis of Japanese newspaper articles and revealed that articles containing group-related words frequently included terms associated with death and brutality, indicating a higher likelihood of fatal outcomes from group violence. Furthermore, co-occurrence analysis indicated a correlation between juvenile delinquency and group crimes. These findings support both hypotheses, providing evidence from non-Western data for research on group violence that predominantly relies on Western data.

The advent of the metaverse has given rise to metacrime, a novel category of criminal activities occurring in the metaverse, which not only challenges conventional digital criminality but existing law enforcement frameworks. To address the scholarship vacancy, this study examines the intersections and distinctions between metacrime and conventional cybercrime by employing a multi-disciplinary literature review and comparative analysis. We identified five shared characteristics between these two crime types: crime classification, continuous evolution, hyper-spatial-temporality (global reach), anonymity, and governance challenges. Crucially, our research highlights the distinct epistemological aspects of metacrime through its criminogenic, victimogenic, etiological, ethical, and regulatory dimensions, exemplified by virtual-to-physical attacks, immersive virtual reality attacks, victimization superrealism, complexities of human-avatar interactivity, excessive misuse of biometric data, increasingly vulnerable populations, and avatars’ liability. Our findings underscore the imperative need for tailored and forward-thinking regulatory responses to address the intricate challenges of metacrime, thereby ensuring the security and integrity of evolving digital environments.

By utilizing a mixed-method approach that combines a quantitative analysis of 10,183 retrieved records of non-uploaded cases, and a qualitative in-depth interview of ten judges and five judge assistants, the current study investigated the pattern of selective uploading, and explored the possible reasons for non-disclosure. We found that the estimated upload rate based on the number of the uploaded and the non-uploaded cases for criminal cases is higher than that reported by previous studies. In addition, there are considerable variations across the type of crimes, the location of courts, and the year of adjudication regarding the patterns of non-disclosure. The in-depth interviews revealed that there are four common scenarios where a case can be assigned to the “Other” group for the reason of non-disclosure: (1) circumstances involving unconcluded cases; (2) cases containing sensitive information that can be used for illegal purposes; (3) cases that involve specially granted circumstances that lead to a mitigated punishment; or (4) simple technical difficulty.

The implementation of community notification for juveniles who have sexually offended (JSOs) is controversial because it does not protect juvenile offenders’ privacy, an essential objective of the juvenile justice system. Researchers have indicated that community notification does not significantly reduce recidivism among JSOs. Instead, notification leads to stigmatization, social isolation, and school problems for JSOs. Consequently, it is critical to explore the factors driving public support for community notification for JSOs. Scholars argue that public support of notification is attributed to misperceptions about people who have sexually offended (PSOs). However, studies exploring a direct association between misperceptions about PSOs and the support of community notification for JSOs in non-Western contexts are scarce. This study analyzed data from 2322 survey respondents in South Korea, finding that a majority (75%) supported community notifications for JSOs. More importantly, a regression analysis revealed three significant misperceptions among Korean citizens that correlate with support for community notification regarding JSOs: the belief that PSOs are likely to reoffend, suffer from mental illness, and spontaneously commit offenses without premeditation. Therefore, these findings underscore the necessity of educating both citizens and policymakers to eradicate these misperceptions, suggesting that the use of notification for JSOs should be reconsidered in South Korea and other countries.

Conventional police databases contain much information on cybercrime, but extracting it remains a practical challenge. This is because these databases rarely contain labels that could be used to automatically retrieve all cybercrime incidents. In this article, we present a supervised machine learning method for extracting cybercrime incidents in calls for police service datasets. Data from the Korean National Police (2020, 9 months, N = 15 million call logs) is used for the demonstration. We combined methods of keyword query selection, minority oversampling, and majority voting techniques to develop a classifier. Three classification techniques, including Naïve Bayes, linear SVM, and kernel SVM, were tested, and the kernel model was chosen to build the final model (accuracy, 93.4%; F1-score, 92.4). We estimate that cybercrime only represents 4.6% of the cases in the selected dataset (excluding traffic-related incidents), but that it can be prevalent with some crime types. We found, for example, that about three quarters (76%) of all fraud incidents have a cyber dimension. We conclude that the cybercrime classification method proposed in this study can support further research on cybercrime and that it offers considerable advantages over manual or keyword-based approaches.

The paper addresses some fundamental and hotly debated issues for high-stakes event predictions underpinning the computational approach to social sciences, especially in criminology and criminal justice. We question several prevalent views against machine learning and outline a new paradigm that highlights the promises and promotes the infusion of computational methods and conventional social science approaches.

Utilizing a probability sample of 1,985 middle school students from Guizhou Province, China, this study aims to explore the association between different patterns of parental migration and fear of crime among adolescents in rural China. Nested OLS regression analyses revealed that compared to adolescents who live with both parents, adolescents experiencing dual-parent migration reported a heightened fear of crime. However, adolescents with only their mother or father migrating did not exhibit any difference in fear of crime compared to those who lived with their parents. Being female, younger, having experienced crime victimization, perceiving greater family economic pressure, and perceiving greater neighborhood disorder and weaker collective efficacy also elevated crime fear. Findings from this study highlight the acute vulnerability of adolescents experiencing dual-parent migration and urge more targeted social support for this group.

Offender rehabilitation is of public and political importance in Japan. The Good Lives Model (GLM) and risk need responsivity (RNR) are the most influential frameworks used to support offender rehabilitation. However, the GLM has had a negligible impact on practice in Japan despite its importance being broadly understood. We conducted this preliminary study using two surveys—one with 133 inmates and one with 133 members of the general public—to assess the GLM’s applicability in Japan. The following questions were used with both groups: To what extent do the Japanese people pursue primary human goods (PHGs), and how does that differ between the general population and prison inmates? Has attaining PHGs been more difficult for prison inmates compared to the general population? The responses were analysed after adjusting for demographic data. The findings indicate that (1) in Japan, both inmates and the general public pursued PHGs, although the importance of all PHGs was significantly higher for inmates; (2) prison inmates had significantly greater difficulty than the general public in attaining certain PHGs in the past; and (3) the importance of future PHGs was significantly higher for all PHGs for inmates than for the general public. These results suggested that the premise of the GLM is relevant in Japan.