'Love For Humanity': Low-crime Japan's Unpaid Parole Officers

(@FahadShabbir)

'Love for humanity': Low-crime Japan's unpaid parole officers

Tokyo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jan, 2025) 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 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.

Around 47,000 citizen volunteers known as "hogoshi" far outnumber the 1,000 salaried probation officers in Japan.

"I never wanted to be thanked or rewarded," said Nakazawa, recalling once going to save a boy "surrounded by 30, 40 bad guys".

"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?"

But the altruistic programme faces an uncertain future, with around 80 percent of hogoshi aged 60 or over.

The recent murder of a hogoshi by a parolee has also rattled the trust in ex-offenders good nature underlying the system.

For one of Nakazawa's former charges, "she was like a grandma".

"I wouldn't dare do anything bad on her watch," he said, declining to be named because he hides his criminal past.

"I was scared of ever feeling guilty that I had betrayed her."

The 34-year-old said Nakazawa "helped me a great deal" -- especially to apologise to his victims.