It is an astonishing data.  I happened to know from a national report that juvenile crimes were rapidly decreasing in Japan.  Let me introduce simplified data here.

Definition: Crimes committed by persons between 14 and 19 years of age.

Year / Number of Cases (unit: thousand) / Population Ratio (per 100,000)

  • 1980 / 220 / 1500
  • 1990 / 180 / 1300
  • 2000 / 150 / 1400
  • 2010 / 100 / 1100
  • 2015 / 50 / 600

It has decreased by 50 percent just for five years!  Contrary to the case of increasing trend or shocking happenings, mass media hardly report such information.

One of possible interpretations is that children have been closely monitored by more adults because of the rapidly falling birth rate.  And you also could imagine there happened some change of the situation for bicycles.

In Japan of recent decades, although thieves were quite rare in public spaces, it was not the case for bikes and umbrellas; they were almost regarded as common property, among people who took them at least.  Theft of umbrella is not enough to be arrested, but one of bike is.  And bike theft actually constitutes a principal part of juvenile crime numbers in Japan.  So you can suppose that improvement for bike parking system  in these years has contributed to the decrease in crimes by teenagers.

Anyway, the change of data is so drastic that we have to pay more attention to and make more investigation for it.

Data Source [Japanese]:  平成28年度版犯罪白書

[E0005/170424]