Sentencing Stats

02/15/17 01:54 PM
Kenny sends this in -

I tried poking around for statistics to shed light on whether Sakakibara's sentence was "too low".

I found this page pointing to statistics related to juvenile sentencing.
http://www.moj.go.jp/housei/toukei/toukei_ichiran_shonen-kyosei.html

And this page pointing to sentencing divided by crime (juvenile included)
http://www.moj.go.jp/housei/toukei/toukei_ichiran_kousei.html

I couldn't go back past 2006, but those stats are probably somewhere in the asia library.

I'm not sure what the best way to present the information is, but it looks like Sakakibara ended up serving a lower end of the "average" or "median" sentence for murder as a whole, since he was institutionalized for roughly 7-8 years and then released.

It's hard to get a picture of the juvenile sentencing because I'm not familiar with the terminology and didn't readily find an explanation. It's possible that juvenile sentencing is not given in absolute "terms" like 5 years. It might be more conditional on rehabilitation or something.