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Japan 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.
Data as of January 1994
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