The Death Penalty in Japan


While it is important to find out the proportion of those in favour or against the death penalty, and the degree of support for abolition, it is as important – if not more so – to look beyond “majority support” to highlight factors that explain patterns of death penalty attitudes. Using block-wise binary logistic regression, in order to predict which respondents would be definite retentionists, it was found that death penalty attitudes are explained by the wider social outlook, such as people who trust in people and institutions. In addition, what is of particular relevance to the Japanese case is knowledge- based attitudinal factors. Te model found that those who held inaccurate views about murder rates – mostly thinking that they had significantly increased in recent years when they have not – were more likely to be definite retentionists. Tis prompts questions about whether the Japanese people hold other inaccurate knowledge, not only in general criminal justice matters, but concerning the death penalty, which was examined in the second survey.


Findings from the second survey


First, Figure 7 compares the distribution of each death penalty position for the two groups. Since respondents in the experimental and control groups had been selected from those in the first survey to comprise equal proportions of retentionists, abolitionists and those answering “cannot say”, any differences observed in death penalty attitudes after intervention are to be attributed to the provision of information.


Figure 7: Te effect of information


200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0


184 157 139 126 108 68 49 44 115 94


■ experimental group ■ control group


should


definitely be kept


Notes: 1) 2)


44


should


probably be kept


cannot say


should


probably be


abolished Experimental group: n=542. Control group: n=542 Figures indicate the number of respondents who selected each position


should


definitely be


abolished


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