R&D Focus Area:Protecting Children from Crime
PUBLIC NEEDS
Area Director:
Tsuneo KATAYAMA
Professor,Tokyo Denki University
As our society changes, the environment in which children grow up continues to change dramatically as well. Efforts to protect children in the community from criminal activities are being undertaken by the national government as well as by families, schools, local residents, local governments, NPOs, private sector companies and so on.
However, many of those involved have pointed out that at present, only isolated efforts on a trial-and-error basis have been made in this area, and many of them are ineffective.
For this reason, in 2007 RISTEX set up a new R&D Focus Area titled窶弃rotecting Children from Crime.窶抖his R&D Focus Area supports outstanding projects where stakeholders will work together to resolve relative problems in order to incorporate scientific knowledge and methods into crime prevention policies. In addition, a network open to all related entities is being constructed to ensure that the efforts are effective and beneficial to society in future as well as today.
GOALS:
- To create an open network to facilitate information sharing and collaboration among relevant parties, including researchers who can provide a scientific knowledge and people who face problems in their work to protect children from crime.
- To develop scientific knowledge and methods that will form the basis for crime prevention policies, ensuring that the importance of evidence-based crime prevention efforts is recognized in Japan, and provide an opportunity to implement these efforts.
- To produce solid outcomes (policy recommendations, experimental proof etc.) from the application of scientific knowledge and methods in efforts to reduce the risk that children will become victims of crime. The design of such case studies should be characterized by consistency with and relevance to the actual conditions of particular communities.
In promoting R&D, consideration will be given to ensuring that important values such as 窶彭ependable interpersonal relationships窶 and the 窶徂ealthy growth of mind and body in children窶 are not adversely affected, and that efforts are conducted jointly by many people with diverse interests and viewpoints.
R&D Program: Protecting Children from Crime (FY2007-2012)
- To fund and support R&D projects (of 1-5yrs. in duration) that are designed to pursue Goal [2] and/or Goal [3]
- To fund and support project planning efforts for those with potential toreceive full-funding in the future by providing opportunities to develop feasible schedules, management structures and other details
R&D Research Projects
| Project Name | Length | Project Director | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2009 | Proposal of 窶廣gencies Linkage" Model for Protecting Children against Crimes | 2.5yrs. | Masaoki ISHIKAWA | Professor, Faculty of Law, Waseda University |
| An Educational Program to Promote Children's Interpersonal-relationship Competence for Crime Prevention | 3yrs. | Reizo KOIZUMI | Professor, Graduate School, Fukuoka University of Education | |
| Establishment of Supporting Regional Systems for Children: Prevention of Victimization and Criminal Offenses | 3yrs. | Masatsugu TSUJII | Visiting Professor, Research Center for Child Mental Development, Hamamatsu University of Medicine Professor, Faculty of Sociology, Chukyo University |
|
| A Study on the Extraction and Monitoring Methods of Harmful Information for Children on the Bulletin Board System | 1.5yrs. | Kenji NAKAMURA | Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science College of Information Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University | |
| Research on the Construction of a Crime Prevention Network in the Local Community through Theatre Workshop Methods | 3yrs. | Oriza HIRATA | Professor, Osaka University Center for the Study of communication-Design | |
| FY2008 | The Development of Civil Instructor Support System for Website Using by Children | 4yrs. | Hirotsugu SHIMODA | Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Association of Media Study (nonprofit organization) |
| Training Program for Video Recorded Interview with Children in Forensic Contest | 4yrs. | Makiko NAKA | Professor of Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University | |
| Development of Advanced Information Technology and Applications for Intentional Injury Prevention | 4yrs. | Tatsuhiro YAMANAKA | Director, Injury Prevention Engineering Research Team (IPERT), Digital Human Research Center, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology / Director, Ryokuen Children's Clinic | |
| Building Support Systems to Community Design Planned for Crime Prevention | 4yrs. | Toshiya YAMAMOTO | Associate Professor, Department of Science and Technology, Meiji University | |
| FY2007 | HEART RENAISSANCE: The Development of Safety Networks for Children in Our Society through Technology and Human Relationships | 3.5yrs. | Mamoru IKEZAKI | Director, Sakai Hill-Front Forum (nonprofit organization) |
| Research and Development (R&D) Project for Learning Systems in Crime Prevention | 5yrs. | Takashi SAKAMOTO | President, Japan Association for Promotion of Educational Technology (JAPET) | |
| Establishing an Empirical Basis to Measure and Prevent Crimes against Children | 4yrs. | Yutaka HARADA | Director, Department of Criminology and Behavioral Sciences, National Research Institute of Police Science (NRIPS) | |
| Development of e-Learning System for the Safety of Children against Crimes | 5yrs. | Daisuke FUJITA | Principal, Ikeda Elementary School attached to Osaka Kyoiku University Professor, Osaka Kyoiku University |
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