> And Japan has an unusually high 99.9% conviction rate.
“The conviction rate is 99.3%. By only stating this high conviction rate it is often misunderstood as too high—however, this high conviction rate drops significantly when accounting for the fact that Japanese prosecutors drop roughly half the cases they are given. If measured in the same way, the United States' federal conviction rate would be 99.8%.”
> statistics might be reflective of underreporting instead of actual occurrence of a crime
I wouldn't trust (as in compare globally) any crime stat from Japan, as they have a 99% conviction rate [0]. This obviously cannot be achieved unless you set up your process to make sure only safe cases enter the systems. And guess what especially occurs in private areas, without witnesses leading to he-said-she-said?
A culture were you don't want to bring shame to your family doesn't help either.
> but unless I'm mistaken, the conviction rate we're talking about is that of people _charged_ overall.
You are mistaken.
"Nearly all criminal cases that go to trial in Japan end in a guilty verdict."
" Public prosecutors typically concentrate on suits where conviction is almost guaranteed, leading to the suspension of around 60 percent of criminal cases in Japan without an indictment."
So japanese prosecutors "drop" 60% of the cases/charges. The only cases they pursue are those they think they can win. They win 99% of those.
> That 60% figure in Canada is precisely referring to people who were charged, and whose charges were later dropped.
No. In the audio, they specifically stated that 37% ( or about a 3rd of the cases in canada ) are withdrawn, stayed or dropped. Meaning only 63% get to a jury. Of those, 3% are acquitted.
> Over 99.4% of people charged in Japan are eventually convicted.
Once again, this is not true. Only 40% of those charged ever see trial. Of those, 99.4% are convicted. In other words, 39.8% of those charged are convicted.
>I think almost everything you say about Japan is wrong.
Tiny part of my comment, no offense or anything. Certainly hoping to learn where I am wrong.
>"99.9% of people accused of a crime ..." -- this is a reference to the fact that the Japanese criminal system's conviction rate is a startlingly high 99.9%
To be fair, it's hard to compare to English law systems. Perhaps it's totally fine, but when you connect the forced labour. I have questions that are unanswered.
>so their 99.9% figure isn't comparable to (say) the US's 93% (that's a figure from 2012; I couldn't readily find anything more recent).
Conviction rate in Canada is ~63%, even lower if you exclude plea deals. We could go into discussion about how for-profit prison system in the USA or illegitimate crimes being enforced. I'm pretty sure 93% is way too high and it's around ~70%.
>"... are forced to work in a gulag" -- so the claim here is that literally every person convicted of a crime in Japan then does forced labour. This is not true, for the simple reason that the great majority of people convicted of crimes in Japan (just like everywhere else) don't go to prison. Only about 15% do.
I think maybe we are comparing apples to oranges here.
>(It is true that most prison sentences in Japan are imprisonment-with-labour. I'm not sure whether it's all of them; I've seen explicit claims that it is and explicit claims that it isn't. I shall not try to adjudicate whether "in a gulag" is a reasonable description of the life of those prisoners. Incidentally, they are mostly paid for the work they do in prison.)
I will concede this. "In a gulag" was improper. The japanese prisons are not political prisoners like communism. As you say, most prison sentences are forced labour. There's the problem I have with Japan.
>The Japanese debt-to-annual-GDP ratio hovered around 50% or so until about 1993 and then started rising rapidly, reaching its present level (the figure I've seen is 225%, not 266%, but in any case it's rather high) around 2012
266.20% in 2020. Covid made it jump almost 30%
>But they had a policy of prison labour before their debt was large; e.g., here's http://www.jca.apc.org/cpr/kaido.html someone complaining about it in 1997 (debt-to-annual-GDP ratio about 70%) using prison labour figures from 1994 (debt-to-annual-GDP ratio about 60%).
Fair, I was saying that the only reason Japan hasnt collapsed to about 30% poverty like Greece is because of the forced labour.
>About 50k people are in prison in Japan. The population of Japan is about 125M. That 0.04% of the population would have to be incredibly productive for their labour to be "the only thing holding Japan together".
Japan is suspiciously low. Kind of impossibly low. Which in the context of the allegation that people are slaves. In a country with many yakuza orgs, sex trafficing, and some pretty strict rules around many other things(porn for example) it seems to me these numbers are impossible.
One day we will find out what the real numbers are. It also seems to me that clearance rates are impossible. Japan clears arson at >70%? The hell? impossible.
Seems that depends on where you look but it's at least on par or below, so point taken.
In Singapore it seems to work well as well. But I always assumed because it is so tiny they will always get you and you will get punished.
It is interesting to learn more and it is a difficult issue which probably is partly unsolvable, I show one perspective, but that might not work elsewhere. I just do not see the damaging a young person from taking part in society forever is a good plan, at all, for small infractions without bodily harm.
> and the subsequent social downgrade.
By no means I claim to know much about Japan but from what I know from reading/watching a lot about it I would wager it's more this than the punishment... But it would need research I guess to figure out why the differences.
"Many Western human rights organizations alleged that the high conviction rate is due to rampant use of conviction solely based on confession. Confessions are often obtained after long periods of questioning by police as those arrested may be held for up to 23 days. This can at times take weeks, during which the suspect is in detention and can be prevented from contacting a lawyer or family."
> First of all, the conviction rate in the US is 85+% last time I checked.
So Japan's acquittal rate is only 15 times lower than one of the most prison-happy countries in the world.
> Secondly, Japanese suspects confess. The theory is that they're coerced, but that requires one to accept a lot of speculation about the psychological impact of prolonged interrogations.
...Which speculation is that, exactly? Are you saying you don't believe that people will do almost anything to escape after being tormented for days or weeks? Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, please.
> you need to be suspicious to even be on their radar.
You been to Roppongi recently? Drugs are being pushed everywhere by specific demographics (non Japanese working for the Yakuza).
> Police culture. The police only move forward with an investigation if there is enough to go on, leading to a high conviction rate.
Do you have a reference ? I suspect that's an incorrect statement. They have a high conviction rate due to putting people under duress. [1][2][3][4][5]
>That's literally impossible. Answer me 2 things that will tell me if it's the lowest slavery in the world.
>1. What is the criminal conviction rate in Japan?
>2. Is there penal labour in Japan?
If I'm reading this argument correctly, it's that because Japan has a high (>99%) conviction rate and uses mandatory penal labour, Japan, therefore, has a modern slavery problem.
There's a few issues with this, the generally accepted consensus for Japan's high conviction rate is that it can be explained almost entirely by the fact that Japan's prosecutors are underemployed and overworked and this is something that can be trivially seen, e.g., while the 42% of US felony arrests result in prosecution the figure in Japan is only 17%, or while the US prosecutes 75% arrested for murder Japan only tries 43%. The implication is that the conviction rate is a result of prosecutors being incredibly selective of which cases they bring to trial, only selecting cases with strong evidence of wrongdoing with a high likelihood of a guilty plea in exchange for a more lenient sentence, rather than any nefarious corruption or underhanded tactics like wrongful confessions.
The second issue is that if the high conviction rate is a result of a need or desire for prison labour then it would also be visible in the incarceration rate, however this is not the case. Japan has one of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. To emphasise just how few people Japan actually jails, let's look at some other countries countries. Incarceration rates are per 100k population: US: 639, England and Wales: 130, China: 122, Spain: 122, South Korea: 105, Canada: 104, France: 93, Hong Kong: 90, Italy: 89, Germany: 69, Japan: 38. Japan has half the prison population that the UK does while having twice the population, if they are jailing people with the intention of using them for slave labour they are doing a terrible job at it.
The only conclusion that can be drawn here is that the conviction rate is irrelevant to the discussion, and while it's still entirely possible to argue that Japan has an unintentional modern slavery problem as a result of prison labour it seems less of an argument against Japan specifically and more of an issue with prison labour in general. But if the problem is with Japan specifically, just how big of a problem is it? Using the globalslaveryindex[0] mentioned in a parent comment we can take a ham fisted approach and simply assume that all Japanese prisoners are slaves, add the Japanese prison population (around 50k) to the estimated number of modern slaves, and, well, Japan still has an incredibly low number of modern slaves, lower than the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and South Korea despite being roughly twice the population of any of these countries, and a quarter of the number of modern slaves that the US has despite being half the population. While I don't agree with prison labour I also don't think it's modern slavery, but even assuming that it is it's incredibly hard to come to a conclusion where Japan looks worse than any other comparable country.
> Try visiting a city that has low crime, like Singapore or Tokyo.
Singapore's lower crime rate is achieved by having a nanny-state government run by an autocrat, with cruel, harsh punishments for fairly low-level offenses and little care for due process. If that's what is required to get us low crime, then I will reluctantly accept higher crime rates.
Tokyo is absolutely not a low-crime city. The Japanese authorities try to paint it as such, and deal with problems quietly. News outlets don't report on much of the crime that goes on; I'm not sure why, but a reasonable guess might be due to pressure from authorities. But I assure you there's plenty of crime (especially organized crime) to go around in Tokyo; it's just not very visible.
Japan also has a near-100% conviction rate, not because they're always right, but because they value clearing cases off their books more than ensuring justice is served. The US justice system is far from perfect, but I prefer what we have here over Japan's.
This doesn't refute the OP's claims, and I think could support them. OP is saying (to paraphrase) that Japan's tough on crime stance is a deterrent, and so there is less crime, and so fewer people incarcerated.
Also, I don't think a reasonable person is worried about getting arrested or shot going to the US. I'm sure I might be possible to make it happen, but as a Canadian, I have never been worried about either of those things going to the US.
> Japan is far behind when it comes to fight the rape culture.
By which metric? According to the first statistic I found online, it's far below most western countries in rates of rape (of course, statistics might be reflective of underreporting instead of actual occurrence of a crime).
> Crime rate is also extremely low in Japan. I don't have evidence that the legal system is the reason, but I believe it's a significant contributing factor.
My money is on the high degree of integration of the Japanese society. They are homogenous and everyone is well kept in place by their social network. That's why they don't become criminals as much, compared to US where crime correlates with disenfranchisement. The more a population feels the game is stacked against it, the more it will do crime, but an integrated society feels much more fair.
> Police patrol will catch you walking down an empty street at 3 AM with a kitchen knife in hand.
That’s really not the (main or significant) reason why Japan has a low murder rate.
Many European countries where there is little societal pressure, direct control and enforcement, drug use is fairly widespread and low level crime is rampant in large urban centers (compared to Japan of course) have comparable murder rates.
In this regard US is a huge outlier compared to pretty much all other “first world” countries.
Actually, it's not over 10 times higher; I double checked, Japan's is also 99.9% and has been for some time.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...
Statistics from Wikipedia link: http://hakusyo1.moj.go.jp/en/61/image/image/h002003001001h.j...
If you just take guilty/not guilty, the % is actually 99.98% in Japan (e.g. 2011, 77 Not Guilty, 432,050 Guilty)
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