ABSTRACT
Those who advocated decentralization of the Japanese police in 1947 would have done well to consult a document written at the very beginning of the Occupation. OSS Research and Analysis Report number 2758, entitled ‘The Japanese Police System Under Allied Occupation’, warned of the dangers of a fragmented police structure. Decentralization might ‘create jurisdictional barriers or conflicts’, and by removing national control bring about ‘a decline in personnel and other standards’. 1 The report also predicted ‘hardship for poorer areas unable to afford a police [force] adequate to their needs’, and expressed concern about ‘the subjection of the police system to the influence of local politics’. 2 The difficulties experienced by the various police units brought into existence by the Police Law, and the abuses associated with the new system, bore out many of the authors’ predictions, particularly with regard to the financial burden of local police systems.
