Outbreak of Violent Crime Unnerves Japan

Discussion in 'Politics' started by ZZZzzzzzzz, May 20, 2007.

  1. Outbreak of Violent Crime Unnerves Japan
    May 18 02:41 PM US/Eastern
    By HANS GREIMEL
    Associated Press Writer
    TOKYO (AP) - A mother beheaded by her son. A baby who suffocated after being stuffed by his parents in the baggage compartment of a motorbike while they went gambling. A murderous shooting spree during a hostage standoff.

    An outbreak of violent crime this week has triggered soul-searching and outrage in Japan, a country that has long prided itself on its safe streets and tight communal bonds.

    The "appalling destruction" of traditional values—as one lawmaker put it—climaxed Friday, when a former gangster killed a policeman and wounded his son and daughter during a shooting rampage at his home, where he had held his ex-wife hostage for 24 hours. It was the first time an on-duty policeman was shot to death since 2001.

    The standoff capped a week of mayhem and mistreatment.

    On Tuesday, a teenager strolled into a police station with his mother's severed head in a bag. On Thursday, a couple was arrested after their 1-year-old son's body was found wrapped in a plastic bag and dumped in a gutter. The baby died after his parents allegedly left him in the baggage hold of a motorbike while they gambled at a pachinko pinball parlor.

    The same day, a 3-year-old child was abandoned by his father at an anonymous drop box meant for unwanted infants.

    "We are witnessing the deterioration of Japanese society," ruling party politician Tsuneo Suzuki told parliament Thursday. "We must stem this appalling destruction of family and community morals."

    While Japan is still a relatively safe country by international standards, crime is on the rise as the country grapples with a widening gap between rich and poor and other social ills.

    Full story here:

    http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D8P6V7B80&show_article=1

     
  2. ok, lol [shrug} too bad for them
     
  3. sounds like Japan has been affected with the same plague that spread in America.Globalization is a bitch.


    "The main conclusion of the paper is that straight income inequality, measured by the Gini index, has a robust significant and positive effect on the incidence of violent crimes. None of the competing hypotheses for the observed connection between income inequality and crime are able to drive away such connection. It is not relative poverty, it is not education inequality, it is not income or ethnic polarization, and it is not the unfair distribution of police and justice protection what explains the effect of the Gini index on intentional homicide rates. Other potentially interesting results of the paper are the following. i) The incidence of violent crime has a high degree of inertia. ii) Violent crime rates decrease when economic growth improves; however, the crime-reducing impact of the GDP growth rate is weaker when income inequality is larger. iii)Relative poverty does not directly affect the crime rate once income inequality is controlled for. Nevertheless, it does have an indirect impact: The crime-inducing effect of inequality falls as the income level of the poor rises. iv) A reduction of the inequality in educational attainment may have a perverse impact on violent crime rates if income inequality does not improve correspondingly. v) Both income polarization and ethnic division have a worsening effect on violent crime rates; however, the influence of income or ethnic polarization is independent from the crime effect of income inequality. And, vi) the average level of income and the average educational attainment in a country are not related to crime rates in a robust or consistent way. On the other hand, illegal drug production is consistently linked with a higher incidence of violent crimes."

    http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/LAC/L...15952cd23b0f30a18525684f00694624?OpenDocument
     
  4. its pretty bad for japan and social tensions are rising alright due to globalization type adjustments, however nothing on the magnitude of europe, and lets not even talk about the u.s....