May 30 (Japan Times) - Police are stepping up cyberpatrols in cooperation with companies and nonprofit organizations to crack down on the increasing amount of information online that encourages people to kill themselves.
In 2017, the dismembered bodies of one man and eight women, aged between 15 and 26, were found in an apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture. A 27-year-old man, who was arrested and later confessed to the killings, used multiple Twitter accounts to contact people who had expressed suicidal wishes, offering to help them die.
The case prompted the National Police Agency to commission private monitoring companies in January 2018 to conduct cyberpatrols, telling them to report to the Internet Hotline Center when they discover worrisome phrases, such as “Let’s die together.†The IHC, when necessary, asks internet service providers and site operators to delete such information.
The IHC received 1,329 such reports in the first six months of 2018 and asked for the deletion of information in 1,255 of them, of which 842 were erased within 14 days of the requests.
In emergency cases where suicidal attempts are determined to be imminent, monitoring companies directly report to prefectural police departments. In cooperation with internet service providers, the police then find the people expressing such thoughts and try to prevent them from taking their own lives.
Of the 204 people who declared their intentions to die by suicide in 2017, 74 were saved after police either persuaded them not to do so or asked their families to keep watch on them, according to a government report.
