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

本研究的目的是研究日本人口的社会人口变化，即所谓的出生率下降的老龄化社会对犯罪和刑事司法制度的影响。由于人口老龄化和出生率下降，日本的犯罪数量总体上一直在下降。此外，通常情况下，犯罪率随着年龄的增长而下降，尤其是在30岁之后，在20世纪90年代中期之后，相反，日本30岁以后的犯罪率仍然随着年龄的增长而下降。在日本，人过了30岁还没有停止犯罪。为了应对上述情况，即对越来越多的失去社会生活基础的老年罪犯进行改造，我们通过重点研究社会工作者在刑事司法系统中的作用，研究了意大利在这一领域的实践。结果，我们发现很多社工都是司法部雇佣的。统筹社会各方面的资源，协助社会上的罪犯及其家人。UEPE是司法部的社会服务组织，作为一个横向组织，而不是一个垂直的、等级结构的组织，在法院、监狱、社会服务和私人组织（如雇佣监狱内外罪犯的社会农场）之间进行调解。

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.