The death penalty and homicide deterrence in Japan
| Author | Kanji Muramatsu,Koiti Yano,David T Johnson |
| Published date | 01 October 2018 |
| Date | 01 October 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1462474517706369 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Punishment & Society
2018, Vol. 20(4) 432–457
!The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474517706369
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Article
The death penalty and
homicide deterrence
in Japan
Kanji Muramatsu
Komazawa University, Japan
David T Johnson
University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA
Koiti Yano
Komazawa University, Japan
Abstract
Japanese officials commonly claim that their country retains and uses capital punishment
because it deters homicide. Although this claim is contested, few empirical studies have
been done to assess the empirical reality. This paper uses data not previously available
(monthly homicide statistics obtained from Japan’s National Police Agency) to examine
whether Japan’s death penalty deters homicide or robbery-homicide. Using vector
autoregression models, it concludes that neither death sentences nor executions
deter homicide or robbery-homicide.
Keywords
capital punishment, comparative criminology, crime control, crime prevention, death
penalty, death sentences, deterrence, executions, homicide, Japan, murder, vector
autoregression
Introduction
Does the death penalty deter homicide? In the United States, more than 100 studies
have been published about this question, and they ‘‘have reached widely varying
conclusions’’ (National Research Council, 2012: ix). In Japan, fewer people
Corresponding author:
David T Johnson, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2424 Maile Way #217, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
Email: davidjoh@hawaii.edu
believe in the deterrent value of criminal sanctions than in most other societies
(Unnever, 2010), but many believe the death penalty deters homicide, which in
practice is the only crime for which prosecutors seek a sentence of death (Jiang
et al., 2010). The Japanese public’s faith in capital punishment reflects the views of
their public officials, who stress two reasons for the country’s continued use of the
ultimate penalty: that it deters homicide, and that the public supports it (Sato,
2014).
1
But unlike the United States, there has been little research about the
death penalty and deterrence in Japan, though the paucity of studies has not
discouraged citizens and officials from making confident claims about the issue.
Indeed, deterrence has been called ‘‘the core of argumentation for and against’’ the
death penalty in Japan (Schmidt, 2002: 102), even though research on the subject
has been all but impossible because of difficulties obtaining decent crime data from
the Japanese government (Schmidt, 2002: 110).
This article uses monthly homicide and robbery-homicide statistics that were
previously unavailable to examine whether death sentences and executions in Japan
deterred these crimes from 1990 to 2010. Our main finding is that the death penalty
did not deter homicide or robbery-homicide. Of course, findings about the death
penalty and deterrence may be marginally relevant to the ultimate question of
whether or not to retain the institution. As the grandfather of death penalty and
deterrence studies observed, ‘‘When a people no longer likes the death penalty for
murders it will be removed no matter what happens to homicide rates’’ (Sellin,
1951: 656). Yet because of the secrecy and silence that surround capital punishment
in Japan (Johnson, 2006), the Japanese public is uninformed and misinformed
about many issues related to it, including deterrence (Sato, 2014: 183; Schmidt,
2002: 194–195). In this context, our research not only contributes to general
debates about deterrence (Goertzel, 2004). It also informs public and political
opinion about the death penalty in Japan (Kita and Johnson, 2014).
The rest of this article proceeds as follows. The next section summarizes what
is known about the death penalty and homicide deterrence in the United States,
which has long been the main focus of research on this subject. Then we summar-
ize results from a handful of prior studies of the death penalty and deterrence in
Japan. The following section describes empirical patterns in Japanese homicide,
robbery-homicide, and capital punishment. Then we describe our variables,
method (vector autoregression (VAR)), and the strengths and limitations of our
study. The results section presents our main findings: (1) death sentences and
executions did not deter homicide or robbery-homicide in Japan from 1990 to
2010; (2) legal reforms to ‘‘get tougher’’ on crime by increasing maximum terms
of imprisonment and extending statutes of limitation did have a deterrent effect on
robbery-homicide in Japan during this period; and (3) higher rates of unemploy-
ment increased robbery-homicide in Japan. The final section discusses the signifi-
cance of our findings and makes recommendations for future studies. More
research is needed, but at present the Japanese government has no sound basis
for continuing to claim that the country needs to retain the death penalty because
it deters heinous crime.
Muramatsu et al. 433
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