An Investigation into Criminal Regulatory Science—An Approach from the Perspective of “Law and Economics”

Abstract

In Japan, criminology has been an interdisciplinary field since its inception, and it is currently at the stage where the aim is to find a general, unified theory spanning the fields of medicine, psychology, law, social science, and so on. Regulatory science, meanwhile, was proposed (in Japan by Mitsuru Uchiyama) as a way of assessing the efficacy and safety in the administration and health sciences. The concept was adopted by the pharmaceutical community and the administration and has recently formed the basis for an academic community. The direction that medical regulatory science is taking, in particular, has come under the spotlight. Various issues, including those concerning medical care, exist that span the fields of life science and the social sciences of law, administration and policy, with criminology caught between all of these. Regulatory science does not only include elements of law, but also of medicine and economics, making it integral to administrative development. However, modern criminology does not directly encompass the economic or social welfare-based viewpoints. At the same time, the evidence and frame of reference-based viewpoints that are required in the life sciences were lost when criminology was seen as a social science. To what extent can that loss be compensated for if we use an approach rooted in psychology or economics? As part of such an investigation we propose the concept of criminal regulatory science. For instance, we believe it is beneficial to consider how effective the field called “law and economics” would be within modern criminology when we look at it from this viewpoint.