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Prof. Koichi HAMAI
Professor, Faculty of Law, Ryukoku University; Director, International Section; Director, Policy Evaluation Unit, Criminology Research Center
[Profile]:
Previously worked in correctional institutions as an employee of Japan’s Ministry of Justice, has held researcher posts at the Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Justice and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, and is well versed in domestic and overseas crime and criminal policy. Current criminological research is based on criminal statistics and scientific evidence.

We Need a Discussion Based on Scientific Evidence
I saw the need for scientific evidence in criminology, in discussions about crime, and in policymaking when I noticed a discrepancy between statistics on crime and the criminals I actually witnessed and the state of criminal punishment. While working for the Ministry of Justice, upon being transferred from a research institute creating Japan’s annual White Paper on Crime and studying criminal policy to the prison system, I encountered prisons full to capacity and convicted offenders held in jails. A large proportion of prison inmates had disabilities or were elderly with dementia, unable to work as a form of punishment, had no place to go after leaving prison, and displayed a high rate of recidivism. The jumping-off point for my research was having doubts over whether punishing criminals under these circumstances or toughening the law had any beneficial effect, and concerns about how this set of circumstances arose. Criminology studies in Japan have an insular and top-down structure; few people consider what kinds of people commit crime, why they commit crime, or the series of events that befall criminals after entering prison; and nobody conducts research into these matters.
My specialty is criminal statistics, and after spending time both compiling Japan’s annual White Paper on Crime and working in the prison system, upon starting research I quickly realized that an increase in arrest rates was not necessarily evidence of a deterioration in civil order. When statistics are not viewed scientifically and when anti-crime measures and criminal policies are instituted on baseless necessity, we end up going down the wrong path. In collaboration with professor Hiroshi TSUTOMI of the University of Shizuoka, a Japanese representative for the Campbell Collaboration, we set to work translating and analyzing reviews issued by the Campbell Collaboration, which is an international social science research network that produces high quality, open and policy-relevant evidence syntheses, plain language summaries and policy briefs.

The Campbell Collaboration
The Campbell Collaboration issues systematic reviews of (science-based) evidence presented as meta-analyses of data collected in experiments conducted in various countries by the same methods and criteria. These reviews are accessible on the Campbell Collaboration website and address the needs of people who require access to the best available evidence in fields of education, criminal justice, crime, and social welfare. When new evidence comes to light, the reviews are also promptly updated and revised. At present, these reviews appear in English on the web site in the form of a scientific article and an abstract summarizing the article, and our work mainly involves translating abstracts and reviews into Japanese.
Legal scholars, lawyers, and other legal experts in Japan rarely discuss matters based on scientific or statistical evidence. I would like people in Japan to discover and recognize the significance of the Campbell Collaboration as a means of sharing systematic reviews, and to make high-quality evidence available for policy evaluation and decision-makers in Japan.

Using my Unique Vantage Point to Examine Criminology on a Scientific Basis
My unique vantage point is based on time spent working for the Ministry of Justice and consists of first-hand experience in all correctional facilities spanning juvenile and adult offenders. I am also familiar with the places where statistics are created. Being experienced in the production of Japan’s annual White Paper on Crime as an editor, I can also compile and analyze all types of statistics collected in the field. Furthermore, having also been temporarily assigned to the United Nations agency that gathers and analyzes statistics from every country, I have a comprehensive understanding of the situation concerning crime in Japan and how Japanese criminal policy is viewed by the rest of the world.
Unlike America and Europe, criminology departments do not exist in Japan, hence few people in Japan understand the significance of discussions on criminology, data that can be used in policymaking, or are capable of analyzing the significance of how these data are created or figures derived from them. By building a foundation for a statistics-based scientific examination and discussion of crime, I hope that the Criminology Research Center will become both a hub for criminology research in Japan and a useful ally to the world.

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Prof. Kayoko KUROKAWA
Professor, Department of Social Welfare, Ryukoku University Junior College; Deputy Center Director; Member, Socio-legal Studies Unit, Criminology Research Center
[Profile]:
Conducts research into social welfare studies. Research topic is the development of practice models for bereavement support.

Examining the Social Function of Children’s Cafeterias
Since my specialty is in social welfare studies, I want to aid research activities across the entire Center through engagement from a social welfare studies perspective. Social welfare studies as an academic discipline examines what it is for people to have well-being and what kind of social infrastructure, including technology, regulatory policy, and welfare, is needed to support them.
Providing support for the socially vulnerable such as children, people with disabilities, and elderly people, poses an especially large number of challenges. This is why my research is now focused on children’s cafeterias.* We live in a period when one in seven Japanese children live in poverty. Child poverty is not just an issue for the individual child but presents a problem for the society around them. Data shows that children who grow up in poverty tend to have lower rates of educational advancement. When lower rates of educational advancement present a hurdle to finding employment, poverty can persist for generations. Children have no choice in the environment they are born into. When lingering poverty robs children of hopes and dreams regardless of hardworking parents, what role can children’s cafeterias play in creating children’s spaces and fostering healthy development? This was the motivation behind starting my research.

* Children’s cafeterias: A social service in Japan that provides good food and warm company either free-of-charge or at low cost to children, parents, and others in the community.

Thinking about Care and the Various Losses of Society
I have studied bereavement care for many years. Just as the bereaved lose someone important to them, a society that needs children’s cafeterias can also be described as having lost many things. For example, loss of community, loss of a safe family environment, and loss of people who eat meals together. People need places where they are needed and where they belong. The loss of places to belong leads to a loss of self-esteem and self-worth. We cannot deny the potential effect of these losses on delinquency and crime. In terms of the “compassionate” criminology advanced by the Criminology Research Center, I plan to study these matters from a social welfare perspective and the perspective of loss in particular.

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Prof. Shin-ichi ISHIZUKA
Professor, Faculty of Law, Ryukoku University; Director, Criminology Research Center; Director, Therapeutic Jurisprudence Unit and Legal Education Unit, Criminology Research Center
[Profile]:
Serves as director of the Criminology Research Center and as leader of the Entaku (round table) project, which is an informal network that connects people wanting to recover from substance dependence and violence dependence.

Broadening the Appeal of Criminology to a Wide Audience
I set up the Criminology Research Center to create a hub where academic researchers intent on studying criminology as a scientific discipline can network, and to also raise the profile of the academic field of criminology in Japan.
Ryukoku University has the Ryukoku Corrections and Rehabilitation Center (RCRC) and is an important contributor to research into correction, rehabilitation and criminal policy in Japan. Similarly, the goal of the Criminology Research Center is to be a contributor in this field through research that combines a good balance of knowledge from the human sciences, social sciences, and natural sciences and to convince people that criminology is an interesting field of academic study.
Considering the social background and origins of people who commit crimes as well as the state of our nation, this gives us pause to ponder the state of the world. A close examination of crime opens our eyes to how people are inextricably linked with the world around them. When considered in this way, criminology is actually a rather interesting field that can be approached from all manner of directions.
The main goal of the Criminology Research Center is that each of its members works on education, human resources, and policy advocacy with the findings of their research. Moreover, another major goal is to facilitate a wide range of students and laypeople learning the appeal of criminology. Through the study of criminology, I want to foster a criminology literacy that guards people against the effects of inflammatory crime news.

Outreach that Supports the Individual
My own research is in the field of therapeutic jurisprudence and mainly covers drug-related problems through formulating drug policy to address the drug-related problems found in Japan. Japan once followed a draconian policy of long-term imprisonment of abusers and possessors of drugs but has recently altered its orientation towards the institution of measures that prevent recidivism by supporting social reintegration through state and civic coordination. Nevertheless, because this support is provided within a legal system that categorizes drug users, the mentally disabled, and elderly people under the same umbrella, it serves to thwart people’s independence.
We must seek to understand the needs of individual people and provide support for people to live according to those needs. People who make a criminal misstep deserve the support of people and society around them so they may work towards resuming life on a new path and avoiding the same misstep. Relating this situation to Aesop's Fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper”, it is important to respect the life of each; thus it is not the case that only the ant pursues the only correct way of life, but rather that the ant lives as an ant would and the grasshopper lives as a grasshopper would, and each have their own way of living. It is by this doctrine and through research and outreach activities that I intend to support offenders and continue policy advocacy and outreach activities that protect individual ways of pursuing life.

Bringing Criminology at Ryukoku University to the World
Criminology at Ryukoku University advances the Buddhist ethos of tomoiki (to build life together) that is represented in the idea that all existence rests on fate, and is also underpinned by Shinran’s views on human nature that stem from accepting things as they are. Although criminology as an academic discipline is not well recognized in Japan, my goal is to bring this criminology of Ryukoku University to Japan and the world.
While incidences of crime in Japan are very low compared to the rest of the world, we still have no clear understanding of why this is the case. Uncovering the reasons for this unique situation may help reduce crime in other countries and I look to foster research that has a positive influence on the international community.

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　このたび、矯正・保護総合センターでは、ホームページのトップメニューに「資料閲覧（閲覧手続き・アーカイブズ）」と「センター発行物（リーフレット・センター通信）／出版物（雑誌・ジャーナル・叢書等）を加えました。
　本センターは、正木文庫などの貴重資料を所蔵しています。閲覧希望の方は、先の「資料閲覧」メニューにアクセスしてください。なお、團藤文庫につきましては、未だ整理作業が完了していないため、原則として閲覧をお断りしておりますので、予めご了承ください。例外的に團藤文庫プロジェクトにおいて公刊論文中で用いた資料（デジタル化したもの）は閲覧対象にしております。公開可能なものは同メニュー内にある「アーカイブス」ページにアップしておりますので、そちらをご覧ください。
　また、「センター発行物／出版物」のメニューには、センターが毎年度発行していますセンター通信「きょうせいほご」や「矯正講座」（実務家向け雑誌）、「研究年報」、「矯正・保護総合センター叢書」にそれぞれアクセスできるよう、改善しましたので、こちらも是非ともご覧ください。

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宗教部カレンダーの2020年度版を発行しました。
龍谷大学大宮図書館が所蔵する『鳥獣略画式（ちょうじゅうりゃくがしき）』（寛政9年(1797)鍬形恵斎紹真(北尾政美)筆、春風堂野代柳湖彫　須原屋市兵衛刊　木版多色刷）をモチーフにデザインしました。鳥獣略画式は、さまざまな動物、昆虫、魚などの姿がのびのびと描かれたユニークなイラスト集です。特に動物を後ろから描いた画は他に例をみません。この略画式シリーズが刊行されると人気を博し、『人物略画式』『山水略画式』「草花略画式」『魚介略画式』『略画式(年中行事)』と続々刊行されました。
カレンダーには龍谷大学の法要や行事予定も記載されています。新入生にご利用いただくことを主旨としておりますが、本学各学舎の礼拝施設（大宮本館、顕真館、樹心館）などに配置していますので、どなた様もご自由にお持ちください。

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