NISHIMURA: Japanese investigators are extremely capable. However, they tend to move on the basis of instinct. The problem is that instinct can’t be shared or stored in a database. So the knowledge of good cops isn’t shared. When you look at police reports, the most important elements are often missing because officers don’t want to disclose them. So I asked: “How do you find a child abductor or a serial killer unless people share police reports between prefectures?”
There is data in a computer. But it is simple information about criminals like height, weight and blood type. To get details or identify patterns you need to review each case individually. Also, these reports contain little information on victims. I have recommended that the government adopt Canada’s Violent Crime Linkage Analysis system, which looks at the links between missing persons and offenders, and between offenders and crimes. But so far the NPA is not willing [to do so].
We face an increasing number of serial crimes. Young people don’t communicate except by computer. They can view pornography online or play computer games in which the object is to take human life. We are seeing the emergence of “affectionless psychopaths”–kids who kill without guilt or sympathy. We are dealing with a whole new criminal species.
Yes. In one, the perpetrator visited prostitutes, demanded sex and then strangled his victims after placing golf balls in their mouths. He killed two women this way and made several other attempts. But the witnesses and victims were in different prefectures, so the evidence was never brought together. Had that been done, the police could have caught him much more quickly.
Investigators don’t focus on sexual preferences and motives. They resist the need for criminal profiling because they think Japanese criminals behave differently from American criminals. I disagree. In Japan we observe the same pattern of escalating sexual crime as in the United States.
We need a program to train police officers in criminal profiling. They must be taught to gather information and analyze it in ways that can be used by others. Not instinct; transferable information. But the police force is conservative. Many officers believe in the old system.
