Law Enforcement in Japan - Police-community Relations

Police-community Relations

Despite legal limits on police jurisdiction, many citizens retain their views of the police as authority figures to whom they can turn for aid. The public often seeks police assistance to settle family quarrels, counsel juveniles, and mediate minor disputes. Citizens regularly consult police for directions to hotels and residences—an invaluable service in cities where streets are often unnamed and buildings are numbered in the order in which they have been built rather than consecutively. Police are encouraged by their superiors to view these tasks as answering the public's demands for service and as inspiring community confidence in the police. Public attitudes toward the police are generally favorable, although a series of incidents of forced confessions in the late 1980s raised some concern about police treatment of suspects held for pretrial detention.