Japan: Criminal Procedure on Computer‐Related Crime

By March 1989 approximately 400,000 general‐purpose computers were in use: these could be found in various fields including financial systems, traffic control, medicine, factories, official registration systems and so forth. It could be said that more or less all important activities depended on computers. Reflecting the wide‐ranging computerisation of business quite a lot of computer‐related crime had appeared that could not be easily dealt with under the provisions of the Japanese penal code as then in force. So a bill to amend the penal code was passed into law in the course of the 108th session of the Diet on 27th May, 1987. The new Act contains provisions amending the penal code so as better to cover computer‐related crime. These provisions came into force on 22nd June, 1987. As a consequence it has become necessary to study various procedural issues that pertain to computer‐related crime.