[Anchorman]

The rewards Japanese police are offering from taxpayers' money for the capture of fugitives are little more than a shambolic farce, according to Weekly Playboy (7/23).

Late last month, five unsolved crimes were listed as eligible for rewards to be handed out to those who provided information related to them, including the controversial case where British language teacher Lindsay Hawker was allegedly murdered in March by rich doctor's son, Tatsuya Ichihashi, who remains on the loose.

Police are delighted at the effect the announcement of the reward for Ichihashi's capture.

"From the time of the crime until June 28, we received about 1,060 tips from the public about the case. In the five days from June 30, we've received an additional 274 tips," an officer involved in the Hawker murder investigation tells Weekly Playboy. "We're getting loads of information coming in."

The men's weekly notes that even if the reward was put in place, it may not have been the reason for the increased public interest in Hawker's murder. On June 29, the day the reward was made public, Hawker's parents also arrived back in Japan and were given extensive media coverage. This could well have sparked the public to give their views to the police searching for Ichihashi.

Japan only started offering rewards from public money for the capture of fugitives in May this year. It was a desperate measure brought about by the declining effectiveness of Japanese crimefighters, which saw an arrest rate for violent crimes of 90.5 percent in 1995 plummet to just 59.4 percent in 2006.

The National Police Agency says that since the introduction of publicly funded rewards, 120 unsolved cases have been made eligible to receive them. The NPA says it has received numerous snippets of information about all the cases.

"Even though none of the information that has come in has led to an arrest, the introduction of a system where public money is used to pay for rewards has sparked great interest in solving crimes among the general public," a spokesman for the NPA tells Weekly Playboy. "There has been a clear increase in the amount of information we are getting about unsolved crimes."

Information alone is just not enough, though, as one police officer points out.

"While there may be an increase in the amount of information police are getting, the fact is that there hasn't been a single valuable tip that has led to an arrest," the officer says.

Koji Harada, a former police chief in Kushiro, Hokkaido, and now a civic activist, rubbishes the public money reward system.

"Even before the system came into place, whenever a crime went unsolved for a long time, the police used to put on a show that they were still looking into it by doing such things as having uniformed officers stand outside busy stations handing out pamphlets and asking people for information. Once they start doing that, it's a sign that the investigation into the case has run out of steam and isn't going anywhere. Rewards are pretty much the same and you shouldn't expect much from them," Harada tells Weekly Playboy, adding even more gloom. "When the police set up a special task force to investigate a case, it only really operates at full strength for no more than one to two months. If it doesn't solve a case in that time, nearly all the task forces are downsized and if a crime is unsolved after a year, there's virtually no more regular investigation work being done on it. Cases where rewards are being offered are going to operate along the same lines."

But the Hawker case is a little bit different considering the victim is a national of a powerful foreign country. While the NPA denies suggestions that the case only became eligible for a reward because of fears of offending the British, former Metropolitan Police Department sergeant and now journalist Akio Kuroki suggests otherwise.

"The ulterior motive of trying to avoid diplomatic friction with Britain is as plain as day," Kuroki tells Weekly Playboy. "The investigation has been a disaster right from the first day of the case when the police let Ichihashi slip through their grasp. There has still been no sufficient explanation about how they let that happen, yet they're now offering a reward and asking for information but pussyfooting around when it comes to solving the case. Today's police are useless." (By Ryann Connell)