The Justice Ministry's 2007 white paper on crimes focuses on repeat offenders, using analyses of statistics from 1948 to 2006. It points to the importance of education and support programs for criminal offenders as a means of preventing the recurrence of crimes, and shows that the duty to prevent crimes should not be delegated only to law-enforcement agencies such as police.
It is hoped that the ministry will make great efforts to involve not only law-enforcement officers but also experts in education, psychology, medicine and social welfare in building networks to provide education and support to criminal offenders, especially those released from prison. Such networks will help greatly in preventing repeat offenses.
The Justice Ministry randomly selected 1 million people who were convicted of criminal offenses from 1948 to 1960, excluding those tried for negligence that led to injury or death and for actions that resulted in traffic accidents. It studied about 1.68 million crimes committed by these people. It also randomly selected 500,000 people who repeated crimes. By delving into records of these people, the ministry tried to get to the truth about recidivism.