Anti-groping technology

last updated 8 January 2015

Osaka, Japan

Japanese police have developed techniques to catch the gropers who make commuting by traina nightmare for women. Japan had to create women-only rail cars last year because so many women—nearly two-thirds of those surveyed—complained they were being fondled and grabbed, sometimes violently, on the jam-packed commuter trains. Now, officials are using forensic techniques developed in Osaka to match microscopic fabric fibers extracted from the palms of suspected gropers with the clothes of victims. So far, 16 offenders in the Osaka subways have been convicted on such evidence.