The purpose of this study is to show how the Japanese government has created laws with harsher punishment since the 1990s. While a tendency toward harsher punishment is common in advanced Western countries, a similar tendency in Japan has prompted scholarly discussion on whether it can be understood through the “penal-populism” framework. However, it lacks in systematic evidence. This study presents three findings that differ from previous studies through a quantitative analysis of legislation with harsher punishment. First, while previous literature argues that the legislation increased in the latter half of the 1990s, this study shows that it peaked in the middle of the 2000s. Second, while previous literature argues that the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Justice promote the legislation, this study shows that it is caused by every ministry’s drafting Bills. Third, this study shows that it does not quantitatively avoid partisan conflicts, contrary to the prediction of the “penal-populism” theory.

The present article investigates how begging performed by citizens of new EU-member states in Eastern Europe was debated in parliaments in Denmark, Sweden and Norway during the period 2007–2017. The empirical analysis shows significant cross-country divergences: In Denmark, efforts targeted controlling migration, either directly or indirectly, via various deterrence strategies. In Sweden, the emphasis was rather on alleviating social needs while migrants reside in the country and trying to decrease their incentives to migrate in the first place by ameliorating conditions in sending countries. In Norway, one predominant framing revolved around the issue of human trafficking of beggars. Despite substantial differences, the analyses show a gradual shift in a similar direction in all three countries. While a social frame was initially more commonly understood as the appropriate way to approach begging, over time a criminal frame has gained ground in all three countries. The article argues that this development must be understood in light of marginalized intra-EU migrants’ legal status as both insiders and outsiders in the Scandinavian welfare states. Due to these individuals’ “in-between status”, neither conventional social policy nor immigration control measures are perceived as available, making policymakers more prone to turn to criminal policy tools.