An Enlarged Role for Probation in Japan to Reduce Drug Offending

Abstract

After sketching the origins and administrative structure of the probation service, the respective roles of professional probation officers (“PPOs”) and the fifty times more numerous volunteer probation officers (“VPOs”) are described. Recruitment of VPOs, their backgrounds, increasing age, methods of work and training is then outlined, followed by activities of local VPO associations and offender rehabilitation support centres. Advantages of the Japanese VPO system are analysed. Voluntary organisations related to probation, including “halfway houses”, are then explained. Established types of supervision are dealt with before the new form of partly suspended sentences and probation is considered. Next addressed is the history and modern extent of drug misuse in Japan; the popularly supported, “no tolerance” and punishment approach taken; the limited medical and psychological counselling opportunities open to drug addicts; steps, from the mid-2000s, towards treatment, albeit within punishment, for drug offenders culminating in partly suspended sentences linked to probation, spurred by concern about high recidivism, belief probation could reduce it and growing official acceptance of drug dependency as a disease. Discussion continues about how much courts will use the new sentences, demands that will be made on the probation service and the fundamental necessity of providing adequate medical, psychological, accommodation and employment assistance for drug offenders, upon which the service may draw, if it is to achieve the aims of reducing recidivism and promoting rehabilitation.