With all due respect, in this political moment of widespread rethinking of the role of police in society (and not only in the US), should we really characterize the expansion of police and military powers as accomplishments?

All best,
Erika

Dr. Erika R. Alpert (she/they)
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
School of Sciences and Humanities
Nazarbayev University
On Sep 17, 2020, 09:13 +0600, SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>, wrote:

From: Lawrence Repeta <repeta55@live.com>

Date: 2020/09/15


Dear Forum Members,

The Abe administration achieved great success in expanding police power
by passing legislation that LDP leaders had sought for decades. Key
achievements:

Expanded wiretapping authority, 2) formally recognized plea
bargaining (first employed in the Ghosn case); 3) expanded state secrecy
powers, backed by sharply increased penalties against leakers and
others; 4) legislation creating the crime of "conspiracy."

The Abe team managed to achieve all this despite opposition from the bar
associations, much of the news media and public intelligentsia, and tens
of thousands of protesters that repeatedly gathered before the Diet. I
think the polling data was nearly uniform in showing majorities opposed
to all of these initiatives. Abe managed to push all this through while
winning every election.

At the same time that he bolstered police powers, Abe managed to bypass
Constitution Article 9, first by the 2014 Cabinet resolution and then by
the 2015 package of national security laws.


This is a tremendous record of achievement.

Larry Repeta


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