The Nexus of Police Research and Policy-Making in Contemporary Japan

• In Event: Policing in East Asia

Abstract

Evidence-based policing and the ‘what works paradigm’ have become hegemonic in Anglo-American contexts, it seems, however, those discourses are less prevalent in many other developed nations - but why? This study especially focused upon the police research and policy-making nexus in Japan, and attempted to reconstruct the larger picture of the relationships by adopting an integrated analytical conceptual framework: political context, evidence and links (networks).
By triangulating a number of data sources – literature review, citation-content analysis on criminology and policing, and fieldwork interviews in Japan with police executives, crime scientists and policy-relevant academics – various explanatory clues have been gathered. What seems to matter most for the progress of evidence-based policing are the certain level of politicization of crime and police, and simultaneously social scientization of crime and police. Such trends are becoming more visible and vigorous while the nature of relative techno/meritocratic autonomy and normative approaches continue to be highly relevant in the Japanese context. This study argues the need to go beyond ‘particularism versus universalism’ and ‘structure versus agency’ for a fuller understanding of current police research-policy relationships in Japan.

Author

• Hidetaka Koyama, The University of Manchester