THE JAPAN NEWS

 

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The number of criminal offenses reported to police in the country in January-June fell 7.7 percent from a year earlier to 450,887, on track to hit an annual postwar low, a National Police Agency report showed Thursday.

The annual crime figure has kept declining since peaking at 2,853,739 in 2002.

The number of crimes continued to drop after the police acknowledged the fewest Penal Code offenses in the post-World War II period for the second straight year in 2016, according to the preliminary report.

On top of crime prevention efforts in the public and private sectors such as increasing the number of policemen and volunteer patrollers, the proliferation of surveillance and dashboard cameras is believed to have made society safer, an NPA official said.

In the 2017 first half, the police received fewer crime reports than the previous year in 45 of 47 prefectures.

Mie and Kumamoto prefectures saw the number of crimes increase year on year in reaction to drops last year due to the deployment of many police officers to Mie for the Group of Seven summit and to Kumamoto in the wake of a series of strong earthquakes, the agency observed.

The report also showed 7 percent to 11 percent declines in the number of vicious crimes such as murders and robberies, moral offenses including gambling and obscene acts, and thefts.

On the other hand, the intellectual offense figure went up 10.5 percent, with bank transfer frauds and sales scams, in which no goods were delivered after payment, showing noticeable growth.

The number of offenders decreased 4.3 percent to 106,004. Of them, minors aged 14-19 numbered 13,305, down 15 percent.