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posted by martyb on Thursday January 31 2019, @06:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the three-hots-and-a-cot dept.

Jail is not top of most people's bucket list of places to visit, but for some it is becoming increasingly attractive. I had heard anecdotal stories of homeless in the UK committing petty crimes in the hope of being given a warm bed and a meal, but in Japan it seems that the elderly are taking things to a whole new level:

Japan is in the grip of an elderly crime wave - the proportion of crimes committed by people over the age of 65 has been steadily increasing for 20 years. The BBC's Ed Butler asks why.

At a halfway house in Hiroshima - for criminals who are being released from jail back into the community - 69-year-old Toshio Takata tells me he broke the law because he was poor. He wanted somewhere to live free of charge, even if it was behind bars.

"I reached pension age and then I ran out of money. So it occurred to me - perhaps I could live for free if I lived in jail," he says.

"So I took a bicycle and rode it to the police station and told the guy there: 'Look, I took this.'"

The plan worked. This was Toshio's first offence, committed when he was 62, but Japanese courts treat petty theft seriously, so it was enough to get him a one-year sentence.

Small, slender, and with a tendency to giggle, Toshio looks nothing like a habitual criminal, much less someone who'd threaten women with knives. But after he was released from his first sentence, that's exactly what he did.

"I went to a park and just threatened them. I wasn't intending to do any harm. I just showed the knife to them hoping one of them would call the police. One did."

Altogether, Toshio has spent half of the last eight years in jail.

I ask him if he likes being in prison, and he points out an additional financial upside - his pension continues to be paid even while he's inside.

"It's not that I like it but I can stay there for free," he says. "And when I get out I have saved some money. So it is not that painful."

Toshio represents a striking trend in Japanese crime. In a remarkably law-abiding society, a rapidly growing proportion of crimes is carried about by over-65s. In 1997 this age group accounted for about one in 20 convictions but 20 years later the figure had grown to more than one in five - a rate that far outstrips the growth of the over-65s as a proportion of the population (though they now make up more than a quarter of the total).

To my mind, there is something wrong with the way we take care of the elderly or those who are significantly poorer than the average when their most attractive option is jail.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 02 2019, @02:02AM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday February 02 2019, @02:02AM (#795275)

    the policy seemed to be dope 'em up stick 'em in the corner and pass 'em without teaching them anything.

    I'm pretty convinced that we were expelled from one school (2nd grade) specifically because we would not dope our kids up, and denied entry to several others for the same. Tried Rispordal on the older one when he turned 15, made him worse - now we're using Marinol "as needed" maybe 3 doses a month, it de-escalates him when you can see a problem coming, and things don't get bad if you miss a dose, because we're not giving it on a continuous basis.

    As for "not teaching them anything" - yeah, the older one who demonstrated some 3 digit addition back in 2nd grade, but basically hasn't done more than counting since then, barely verbal, all but illegible handwriting... yeah, he's getting a 3.8 GPA in the standard high school courses like Pre-Algebra, History, English, etc. He got As in art without ever entering the art classroom and never doing any artwork.

    My sympathies to you and your family. My wife's mother passed away recently and we discovered a flock of cousins who she never spoke with/about - 4/5 of their families have kids with autism, mostly in their 20s and 30s now. We thought it came down our male family lines, but her mother's family is much more full of it than her father's, and my mother's side is hard to judge since we're the only ones to have children down her side since my younger brother was born in the early 70s.

    I've done a lot of work with smaller companies, so when you say "C level" I immediately think: CEO, CFO, CIO....
    My first job saw me rise to VP of R&D (in a company of 6 employees, total) and still do programming work in C++. Then after 12 years with that place, it finally cratered financially and I was sitting in a park, unemployed, with my wife 6 months pregnant and a toddler - met another couple with a toddler, he just had a 2 year college degree and works for Johnson Controls doing PLC setups. Maybe I was paid better when I had work, but he had the more stable job, and didn't waste an additional 4+ years getting a MS degree. I finally "got bought" along with one of the small companies I was working for and the big company gave me a nice raise, better benefits, bonus, etc. so I've been hanging with them for 5+ years now, and plan to ride this bus as long as I can.

    Best of luck to you and your kids especially. No matter where you are, it can always be worse. If "significant autism" is a 1% of the population incidence, our oldest is in the top 1% of that 1% for most severely challenging/impaired that we've met; but a friend of ours has a son just about his age who's even worse + has seizures - they're about 10 years younger than us, but you can tell it's taking a huge toll on them. And, then, neither of our families is trying to handle this as a single parent, but we know several that are - some by divorce, some by absence/neglect, and one by early death of a parent...

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  • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Saturday February 02 2019, @01:58PM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Saturday February 02 2019, @01:58PM (#795386)

    The Autistic granddaughter with the body morphology problems has improved by leaps and bounds in a new school where she's more than the teachers 'problem child.' The change is so stunning as the new school actually works with her!

    I in turn wish you the best as well and may we both see at least a few years of actual retirement!

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