Treatment of offenders in the aged society with a declining birthrate: the role and responsibility of social workers in the criminal justice

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The purpose of this research is to study the effects of the socio-demographic changes in population in Japan, that is, the so called aged society with a declining birthrate, on crime and criminal justice system. The number of crimes in Japan has been declining in general due to the aging population with a declining birthrate. In addition, while normally the crime rates drop with aging, especially after 30 years of age, after the mid of 1990s, on the contrary, crime rates remains with aging after 30 years old in Japan. People have not desisted crimes after 30 years of age in Japan. In order to deal with the above situation, that is, to rehabilitate the increasing elderly offenders who lost the base of the life in the society, we have studied the Italian practices in the field by focusing on the role of social workers in the criminal justice system. As a result, we found that many social workers are hired by the Ministry of Justice. They coordinated various social resources in the community to help the offenders as well as their family members in the community. UEPE, social service organization in the Ministry of Justice, performs as a horizontally-based organization as opposed to a vertical, hierarchical structure of an organization and mediates among the courts, prisons, social services, and private organizations such as social farms which hire the offenders in and outside prisons.