Old People in Japan Are Committing More Crimes Than Teenagers

Japan's overall crime rate is expected to continue its historic decline, likely reaching a record low by next year.

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Complex Original

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In addition to its imminent victory over America in a forthcoming robot war, Japan is also curbing its crime rate with undeniably startling results. However, this countrywide decline in criminal activity is also revealing some fascinating facts about the dispersion of crime across different age groups. For the first time since Japan started tracking such statistics in the 80s, police now regularly "take action against more elderly people than youths."

Citizens aged 65 or older were subject to 23,656 "police actions" between January and June, according to Quartz. By comparison, those between the ages of 14 and 19 warranted 19,670 police actions during the same sample period. Since 2014, the juvenile crime rate experienced a 15.3% decrease — while the elderly kept things very interesting indeed with a perplexing 10.8% increase.

Paired with the fact that Japan's overall crime rate has fallen 8.8% since 2014, the baffling leap in the number of old people bending and/or breaking the law would seem to be indicative of a very different issue — a "rapidly aging population."

 

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