45.9% of Respondents Say Information Regarding History of Sex Crime Offenders Should Be Provided to the Public - Results of survey on public security show 90% with perception that public security is deteriorating -

Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. (NRI: Tokyo; Akihisa Fujinuma, President, CEO & COO) conducted an online survey on public security during the period of March 15-16, 2005. The results showed that close to 90% of respondents felt that public security had deteriorated in Japan within the past two to three years, while 45.9%, or roughly half of all respondents, were of the opinion that information regarding the history of sex crime offenders should also be provided to concerned parties other than the police. It was revealed that there is a trend among ordinary citizens toward acceptance of strengthening crime prevention measures with some restrictions.

Almost 90% of respondents feel that public security is deteriorating
Respondents who said that public security "Became worse" in Japan in the past two to three years made up 53.1% of the total. Combined with those who said that public security "Became much worse" (36.4%), 89.5% of respondents held the perception that public security had deteriorated. Perception of deteriorating public security grew especially with age (Figure 1). Looking at crimes by type, the majority of the respondents felt that cyber crimes and card crimes such as fraud involving cash transfer requests posing as relatives and credit card skimming were increasing markedly. In addition, over 90% responded that felonious crimes such as robberies and homicides as well as crimes by minors were "increasing" or "increasing markedly" (Figure 2).

Moral degeneration in society and lack of communication in households
When questioned about the causes of the deterioration of public security, most respondents cited moral degeneration in society at large (60.9%), followed by the increase of foreigners illegally staying in Japan (57.8%) and lack of communication in households (57.0%). As only 28.9% of respondents cited school education as a cause, it can be considered that the deterioration of public security is felt as more influenced by households than school education (Figure 3).

Active support for further disclosure of information regarding history of sex crime offenders
With regard to the Ministry of Justice's plan to provide information on people with a history of sex crime offenses to outside institutions from June 1, 2005, results showed support from about 90% of the respondents. As to who should be provided with the information, those with the opinion that it should be solely to the police made up only 44.2% of the total, with a larger 45.9% of respondents saying that the information should be extended to parties other than the police. Of these, 13.6% said that the information should be disclosed for access to anyone via the Internet (Figure 4). Furthermore, 70% of respondents expect that the crime recurrence prevention system will have a deterrent effect on incidence of crime.

88.9% support installation of security cameras
When asked about the pros and cons of installing security cameras on the streets, 88.9% of respondents responded that security cameras should be installed (Figure 5). With approximately 70% of respondents asking for some restrictions, concerns can also be especially seen towards intrusion of privacy (51.0%) and leakage of personal information through exposure of recorded images (37.5%) (Figure 6).

High evaluation for police emergency responses, low evaluation for crime prevention activities
When asked to evaluate the police, respondents gave more positive replies than negative replies about emergency responses to 110 calls (emergency calls) and others, criminal investigations, and arrests of perpetrators. However, there was a surplus of negative responses about crime prevention activities by the police. When combining the evaluations of police activities as "Not so commendable" and "Not commendable at all", they were worst for measures for victims (71.7%), crackdown on foreigners illegally staying in Japan (63.3%), and police patrol (61.2%) (Figure 7).

High expectations for increasing the number of police officers
When questions were asked about an initiative to eliminate cases where some police boxes have no police officer for certain hours and to increase the number of police officers, 30.7% said that it was effective in improving public security. Combined with the 56.1% who stated that it was somewhat effective, the results showed that over 80% of the respondents appreciated the increase in the number of police officers (Figure 8).

For the sake of safety, crime prevention measures to be strengthened
With regard to the reinforcing trends of efforts and measures to maintain public security in society as a whole, the various abovementioned efforts were most often described as "Not desirable but inevitable for the sake of safety" by 34.2% (Figure 9). As a result, it can be seen that in order to protect safety in everyday life, majority of respondents think it will be necessary to strengthen crime prevention measures while imposing some restrictions for protecting privacy and personal information.