Criminalization and prisoners in Japan

In his second book to deal with Japanese corrections, Elmer H. Johnson establishes the cultural heritage and structure of the criminal justice administration that underlies Japan's reluctance to use imprisonment, which he first examined in Japanese Corrections: Managing Convicted Offenders in an Orderly Society.

Here he introduces the concept of criminalization, its implications, and its two versions that differentiate four of the six cohorts who have entered prison in increasing numbers in recent decades: yakuza (Japanese mafia), adult traffic offenders, women drug offenders, and juvenile drug and traffic offenders. Foreigners and elderly inmates (the other two cohorts) elude criminalization as groups but also have become prisoners in greater numbers for other reasons.