<![CDATA[Japanese ex-convict hired by LG, Maersk wants society to give offenders a second chance]>
Shogo Suzuki is today an impeccably dressed and well-mannered young man of 24 " but not long ago, he was a self-declared troublemaker. He was skipping school at the tender age of 14, joined an underworld group in Tokyo not long after, and then worked as an illegal street tout trying to inveigle young girls into the sex industry. He was also partying hard along the way and regularly getting into fights.
Inevitably, he was arrested and found himself serving a two-year term in a prison for juvenile offenders before he had turned 18.
Six years later, he says the experience changed him and, as a consequence, he has set out to change the attitudes of Japanese society towards former inmates. His first task, he says, is to convince employers to hire people with a criminal record.
"I did a lot of things wrong," said Suzuki. Prison reduced him to "rock bottom," as he was at the mercy of the strict daily regimen and the guards. Soon, however, he began to keep a daily diary in which he penned his thoughts on the past and hopes for the future.
The realisation dawned, he said, that his lack of education was something he could address while serving time, so he studied for his high school exams " which he passed " and then a number of vocational qualifications.
His ambition of going on to university was repeatedly rebuffed, due to his criminal record, until he got a place at a Tokyo college studying English. He later went to Hosei University, considered one of the best in the capital, but his old bad habits were resurfacing and he was spending more time as a DJ in the nightlife district of Shibuya than studying.
Japanese society has traditionally been hostile to anyone with a criminal record, according to an expert. Photo: Shutterstock
The arrest of a fellow DJ shook him, Suzuki admits, and he returned to university " only to drop out in his third year. The next hurdle was to find a job and, once again, he discovered that not a lot of companies take chances on hiring former inmates.
"Hundreds" of his application letters were met by an identical number of rejections, he said. But then one day his phone rang. It was an official from LG, the South Korean electronics firm, offering him a position. Suzuki admits he was so overjoyed that tears streamed down his cheeks.
He took a job as an international logistics manager with LG, helping in the development of electric power facilities, and says he developed a sense of working for the betterment of society.
Encouraged by his two-year stint with LG, he was offered a better position with Dutch shipping giant Maersk and was asked to set up the company's in-house digital forwarding system. The seven-month assignment included spending three months in Holland, and he was also encouraged to enter a competition for business start-ups in Japan.
His proposal won the competition, in March last year, and it became the basis of what is today his company, Cross Career.
Cross Career is effectively a job-placement firm that only handles people with criminal records. Although placements have been low, Suzuki believes business will pick up.
By far the hardest part of the job is convincing companies to hire someone with a record, Suzuki said. "Many companies will not hire former prisoners because they fear it will hurt their image if that comes out," he said.
"Some people in Japanese society just will not accept people with a criminal record, but I believe this is an extremely important way of helping these people and helping society by reducing crime."
Reformed Japanese ex-con Shogo Suzuki. Photo: Handout
Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that former convicts who do not secure employment after their release are four times more likely to commit another crime.
"It's pretty clear, If you find jobs for these people, then the government does not have to support them and they don't go back to crime," Suzuki said.
Shinichi Ishizuka, a law professor at Kyoto's Ryukoku University and director of its Criminology Research Centre, said Japanese society has traditionally been hostile to anyone with a criminal record, but he senses that attitudes might slowly be changing.
"People do not want to have contact with anyone who is known to be a criminal, which means that employers would not trust them and they could not even get jobs working in restaurants out of concern their backgrounds would become known and customers would stop coming," Ishizuka said.
"But in the last few years, opportunities are coming up because of Japan's terrible shortage of labour," he said.
A second part of Cross Career's campaign is focused on improving education facilities in Japan's prisons, to give inmates more marketable skills and knowledge for when they are released.
Suzuki is planning to set up meetings with a number of Japanese politicians and with officials of the Ministry of Justice to explain his vision and ambitions. He is aware that he may once again run into a wall of resistance, but he is prepared.
"I'm not at all sure that they will want to talk with me, partly because the ministry prefers to work with non-profit organisations on issues like this, but there has to be a first time," he said.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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