Japanese Eldercide Sentencing Decisions, 2000–2024, with Motive Analysis

Japan's sentencing decisions from 2000 to 2024 provide the basis for this qualitative analysis of eldercide motives by family caregivers. The dataset comprises supplementary files for a study analyzing 91 cases, identifying four primary motives: financial strain, mercy, caregiving burden, and resentment. Author Masahiro Suzuki published the files under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing judicial distinctions between sympathetic and condemnable motives based on the identified categories.
• Training NLP models for qualitative coding of legal texts based on the thematic analysis of motives.
• Studying the intersection of aging, caregiving, and violence within a specific cultural and legal context.

Strengths

• Analysis is based on 91 sentencing decisions, providing a substantive qualitative sample.
• Covers a 24-year time range (2000–2024), allowing for longitudinal observation of legal trends.
• Identifies four distinct motive categories (financial strain, mercy, caregiving burden, resentment) from the source material.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.
• Data is contained in PDF files (77.8 KB total), which may require manual extraction for computational analysis.
• The CC BY-NC-ND license restricts commercial use and derivative works.

Provenance

Source

figshare, uploaded by author Masahiro Suzuki.

Collection Method

Qualitative analysis of sentencing decisions.

Time Range

2000–2024

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-14 12:30:38.

Geography

Japan