Shigeru Shibusawa
Chair, Chiba Prefectural Core Community Life Support Centres Liaison Committee

1. The Core Community Life Support Centres

The Core Community Life Support Centres (hereinafter, the Core Centres) are comprehensive welfare advice services established independently by Chiba Prefecture. They are for all local residents, including children, disabled people, the elderly, and others, and advice is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The concept for the Core Centres was developed in the process of drawing up the First Chiba Prefecture Community Welfare Support Plan, which was finalized in 2004. This was an era when calls to ensure the sustainability of the social security system were beginning to be heard, prompted by low economic growth and an ageing society. It was the time when the adult guardianship system began; the Act on the Prevention, etc. of Child Abuse came into force; and the nursing-care insurance system and system of payments to support disabled people had recently come into operation: the current welfare system had only just taken its first steps. At this time, in order to escape from the conventional, silo model of welfare and create a welfare advice service which anyone could use at any time, Core Centres in 14 areas across the entire prefecture (the areas of jurisdiction of public health centres) all launched our activities at once, in October 2004.

Our work is to provide crosscutting, comprehensive advice and support 24 hours a day, 365 days a week to people who find it hard to live in the local community, such as those who fall through cracks in the system or those with complex issues. Aiming to work in partnership with relevant organizations in the local community, we work to build communities which share local issues, deal with rights violations, and provide a backup for municipalities and advice and support organizations. Social welfare corporations and NPOs recruited each year and selected in each locality enter into outsourcing contracts with Chiba Prefecture to carry out this work.      

In the 2020 fiscal year, the 13 centres received a total of around 80,000 requests for advice. This works out an average of around 500 requests to each centre every month. The content of these requests ranges widely, from an elderly woman with schizophrenia who calls several times each day to a young person who has left a children’s home, a middle-aged woman living long-term in her car, or a couple with disabilities seeking assistance in raising their children. Staff sometimes accompany people who are taken to hospital by ambulance in the middle of the night. There are also staff who have been visiting shut-ins at home for many years now.

Centre staff keep the following points in mind when carrying out their activities: “Do not turn someone away; first, make a move”, “Value relationships with relevant people in the local community”, “When at a loss, take the standpoint of the person in the weak position”, “Do not rush for a solution”, “Do not seek correct answers”, “Think about community-building”.

2. Our involvement so far with incarcerated people

We have been involved with incarcerated people as part of our advisory work at the Core Centres. These requests for advice include enquiries from the police about where to hand over people whom they have arrested or taken into protection; enquiries from lawyers about witnesses for court cases or support after release; support for people whose cases have been dropped by the Public Prosecutor’s Office; requests for advice from people whose acquaintances or family members have caused incidents; and requests for support for people who fall under the Act on Medical Care and Treatment for Persons Who Have Caused Serious Cases Under the Condition of Insanity.

What we do in these cases is to look for housing, and connect the person with welfare benefits and services. We also visit people in prison, and correspond with and send items to them. We sometimes accompany people with suspended sentences to their scheduled interviews with probation officers. We also clear out rented accommodation after someone has been arrested and help to manage their relationship with their family. Accompanying people right in front of us in their troubles, and aiming to move society in this direction, is fundamentally no different from what we do in our regular work. However, I believe that there are particular difficulties when it comes to supporting incarcerated people: assessment timings and venues are limited; the period when support is needed varies greatly according to the charges and the judgement; information is limited; and it is not unusual for them to suffer social exclusion.

3. The Chiba Prefecture Model Project to Encourage the Prevention of Recidivism

Chiba Prefecture was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice to carry out a “Community Model Project to Encourage the Prevention of Recidivism” during the three years beginning in 2018. This was because it was apparent from the track record of advisory services at the Core Centres that even some of the people who were not covered by the “special coordination” provided by Centres to Support Ongoing Life in the Community needed a considerable amount of support when returning to society. Before these people enter the community, while they are in a correctional institution, welfare specialists assess whether or not they have support needs, and organizations such as the Core Centres visit them in prisons, etc. in order to consider, and later implement and verify, a “comprehensive support structure for reintegration into society” which links the individual’s needs and support for their life after leaving the institution.

In the first year, 2018, the actual situation was investigated based on the track records of the Core Centres and Centres to Support Ongoing Life in the Community. From the following year onwards, a system was put in place and adjusted. In the second year, 2019, we carried out concrete support for institutions within Chiba Prefecture. There were 11 requests for support from the probation office and two prisons. Half of these concerned people who had been detained in lieu of payment of fines. At the beginning, we were concerned that many of the inmates of prisons within Chiba Prefecture were serving long sentences, and that they might not take to this project; but I feel that matching this project with the needs of people who had been detained for failing to pay fines was thanks to the sound instincts of the welfare specialists.

In 2020, the final year of the model project, we expanded the scope to cover correctional institutions within the Tokyo area. Before doing so, we produced a leaflet for inmates explaining the initiative in Chiba Prefecture, although this had not been in our initial plans. Using this, a structure was put in place by which welfare specialists explained the initiative in Chiba to inmates; Chiba Prefecture coordinated requests from inmates; and after contacting them to exchange information, a person from Chiba prefectural government in charge of the project and the advice organization visited the prison to talk with the inmates. As a result, 17 requests for support were received from 8 prisons: Maebashi, Tochigi, Kurobane, Fuchu, Yokohama, Nagano, Mito, and Kawagoe juvenile prison. Of these 17 requests, only 2 of the people had somewhere to live after returning to society (one of these was to be released on parole) so, in order to coordinate support for their life after release, we visited the inmates multiple times to ask their intentions and put environments in place for them.

4. Initiatives after the end of the Model Project

How and to what extent to share information such as the criminal and life records of the people covered by the Model Project were delicate issues which arose in the course of the project. We discussed these questions repeatedly. As a result, we came up with a process whereby the prison and the person concerned consulted with each other to fill in and return information sheets provided by Chiba Prefecture. One of these sheets was for writing the person’s life record. Looking at all these life records, I felt that each person had a period when they were living a stable life. At that period, the person in question had someone close in their life who was irreplaceable to them, whether a family member, an understanding employer, or friends or companions. I felt that they committed crimes when these relationships had become distant.

Chiba Prefecture set up an independent project to continue visiting prisons after the end of the Model Project in order to “promote uninterrupted life support for those who have committed crimes”. This positioned the work carried out under the Model Project as a project by Chiba Prefecture. This work is also positioned as one of the core policies in the Chiba Prefecture Plan to Encourage the Prevention of Recidivism, which was finalized in January 2022. In fiscal year 2021, we received 25 requests for advice from 12 prisons. Staff of the Core Centres are sometimes accompanied by staff of advice centres for those living in poverty or of core advice and support centres for disabled people.

I feel that almost everyone who commits repeat offences is someone who no longer has a place in society. In order to make places for them, I hope that we can first of all become people who are irreplaceable to them.