\n Teruko Nakazawa once intervened in a knife fight between an ex-offender and their mother -- all in a day's unpaid work for Japan's army of volunteer probation officers.\n<\/p>\n
\n The 83-year-old, who jokes she is a \"punk\" as she puffs on a cigarette, devoted decades to supervising and helping rehabilitate convicted criminals on parole.\n<\/p>\n
\n But she did not take a single yen for her hard work under a long-running but little-known state scheme that some say contributes to the nation's famously low crime rate.\n<\/p>\n
\n Around 47,000 citizen volunteers known as \"hogoshi\" far outnumber the 1,000 salaried probation officers in Japan.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I never wanted to be thanked or rewarded,\" said Nakazawa, recalling once going to save a boy \"surrounded by 30, 40 bad guys\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I did what I did because I wanted to,\" she told AFP. \"You can't help but try to put out a fire when you spot one, right?\"\n<\/p>\n
\n But the altruistic programme faces an uncertain future, with around 80 percent of hogoshi aged 60 or over.\n<\/p>\n
\n The recent murder of a hogoshi by a parolee has also rattled the trust in ex-offenders' good nature underlying the system.\n<\/p>\n
\n For one of Nakazawa's former charges, \"she was like a grandma\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I wouldn't dare do anything bad on her watch,\" he said, declining to be named because he hides his criminal past.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I was scared of ever feeling guilty that I had betrayed her.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n The 34-year-old said Nakazawa \"helped me a great deal\" -- especially to apologise to his victims.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Stabbing -\n<\/p>\n
\n A 60-year-old hogoshi was fatally stabbed in Otsu, near Kyoto, by a man under his supervision in May.\n<\/p>\n
\n The incident raised fears that potential hogoshi -- who may already be wary of parolees whose crimes include theft, sex offences and sometimes murder -- could be scared away.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hogoshi have historically rejected proposals to be paid a regular wage.\n<\/p>\n
\n This is because their activity is \"a symbol of selflessness\" rooted in \"love for humanity\", legal experts said in an October report.\n<\/p>\n
\n Only some of their expenses are covered, and they must pay a yearly registration fee -- another factor blamed for the struggle to attract younger volunteers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Still, Japan \"would be a different country without hogoshi\", said Carol Lawson, a comparative criminal justice professor at the University of Tokyo, citing the nation's \"extraordinary lack of post-war crime\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The system's high \"tolerance of risk\" is unusual, she said. Hogoshi often invite parolees to their homes to develop a warm, familiar relationship.\n<\/p>\n
\n Countries such as the Philippines, Thailand and Kenya have made use of Japan's expertise to introduce similar systems.\n<\/p>\n
\n But \"it's hard to even imagine the hogoshi system gaining any traction\" in Anglo-American jurisdictions with a more \"retributive\" mindset, Lawson told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'OK to exist' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Nakazawa said her daughter used to worry about her safety and would have urged her to quit had the Otsu homicide occurred before her retirement in 2018.\n<\/p>\n
\n But if society shuns ex-offenders, \"they will only proliferate and commit even more heinous crimes,\" she said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We have to root for them so they won't reoffend.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Hogoshi often recruit other hogoshi based on criteria such as reputability, stable income and sufficient free time.\n<\/p>\n
\n Mieko Kami, a 74-year-old Tokyo flower arrangement teacher, had no experience with criminals before joining the scheme.\n<\/p>\n
\n When first approached, \"I thought, 'there's no way I can do this'\", Kami told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n But after three years she changed her mind and was soon sipping tea with a yakuza gangster, helping a young man in a squalid apartment and hurrying at night to a blood-soaked suicide attempt.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Learning about their upbringing sometimes makes me think it's inevitable they turned out this way,\" Kami said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I feel they want to be assured it's OK to exist,\" she said, describing herself as \"sometimes being their mother\".\n<\/p>\n
\n \"So I praise, acknowledge them... I feel fond of them.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Good listener' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Currently on parole in Osaka, Ueko, who only gave his nickname, recalls taking illegal drugs \"to be set free of my painful life\" trying to fit in as a gay person in Japan.\n<\/p>\n
\n Initially, his hogoshi's life seemed so impeccable \"I doubted he could possibly understand the feelings of us ex-prisoners,\" the 47-year-old told AFP at drug rehab centre DARC.\n<\/p>\n
\n But now \"he's a very good listener for me\".\n<\/p>\n
\n It is not uncommon for parolees to skip their twice-monthly appointments with hogoshi and fail to bond.\n<\/p>\n
\n Still, Nakazawa's once-rowdy charges sometimes visit her cafe for tearful reunions, or phone her asking about her health.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They even jokingly tell me, 'don't mess around', which is exactly what I used to tell them!\" Nakazawa laughed.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I spent my whole life caring about other people. But now I'm old and getting weak, they're caring about me.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n \"They're my hogoshi now.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teruko Nakazawa once intervened in a knife fight between an ex-offender and their mother -- all in a day's unpaid work for Japan's army of volunteer probation officers. The 83-year-old, who jokes she is a \"punk\" as she puffs on a cigarette, devoted decades to supervising and helping rehabilitate convicted criminals on parole. But she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-140528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n