CRIMINOLOGY IS being stood on its head in fast-greying Japan. Here on the cold northern island of Hokkaido, history was made in 2006 when total arrests of elderly people exceeded those of teenagers, writes BLAINE HARDENin Sapporo
The elderly accounted for 880 arrests, mostly for shoplifting, while teenagers were held 642 times. Since then, OAP crime has surged. For every two teenagers arrested on this island, police have arrested three people aged 65 and older.
The trend echoes across Japan, where crimes committed by the elderly are increasing at a far faster pace than the elderly population itself.
While the 65 and older population has doubled in the past two decades, crime among the elderly has increased fivefold, according to government statistics. Japan's overall crime rate, always low by world standards, has been falling.
Around the world, criminologists have found that the propensity to commit crime peaks in the late teens and early 20s, and falls off steadily as people age. But Japan, with the world's oldest population and lowest proportion of children, is headed into uncharted waters for criminal behaviour. Experts here predict that the entire country, like Hokkaido, will soon record more arrests of the old than the young.
The elderly in Japan are committing crimes, nearly all of them nonviolent offences, because of loneliness, social isolation and poverty, according to a recent study.
"When people feel lonely, there is an impulse to commit a crime so they will somehow connect with someone," says Hirokazu Shibata, a Hokkaido police official who leads a crime prevention task force which has questioned 220 elderly people arrested mostly on charges of theft.
Mr Shibata and other police in Hokkaido have also found what they describe as a consistent pattern of isolation and anxiety among elderly people who commit crimes. "They are not in touch with their children and have no connection with their brothers and sisters."
A desperate desire for human contact or for novelty in their lives leads many elderly people to shoplift, experts say.
"They want somebody to talk to," said Hidehiko Yamamura of National Shoplifting Prevention Organisation, a nonprofit group in Tokyo. "If they get caught, they can talk to the police. They are very easy to catch." - (LA Times-Washington Post service)