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Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

The retired cop then noted that even the yakuza don’t like to use guns these days — because the penalties are too high...One mid-level yakuza boss told me, “Having a gun now is like having a time bomb. Do you think any sane person wants to keep one around the house?”

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/01/06/national/media-...

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One friend got beaten up by Yakuza because he banged up a Russian prostitute that 'belonged' to them. No guns, just golf club beatings, and of course they didn't get carried away (no broken bones, just bruises).

Such enlightened and thoughtful thugs.

See, coming from a culture were people kill each other because of traffic misunderstandings, domestic violence being incredibly common, etc. it's really a surprise.

One hopes this person was no longer your friend after doing so.

As much as I want to believe this is true, I can't help but question the accuracy of the japan times reporting on Japan. In my mind, it's like RT reporting on Russia

This seems like a bit of an odd complaint, do you think journalism has to be done by foreigners?

Or if your comparison to RT is about them being owned/heavily influenced by the government, they're not: the NHK is the quasi-governmental news org in Japan.

In fact, this particular article is by a foreigner - Jake Adelstein, an American who has been reporting on the yakuza and Japanese police for a long time now. He’s written for a lot more outlets than just the Japan Times as well.

I don't believe the Japan Times is a propaganda arm of the Japanese government in the same way as RT. They aren't as old an organization as Mainichi Shimbun for example, but I wouldn't group them with RT or Sputnik. Television news organizations in the country have to tread lightly, since they have to come hat in hand to the government when they need to renew their broadcasting licenses, but I don't believe other news organizations have that kind of power exercised over them by the national government.

You meant 'wouldn't group them with RT or Sputnik', right?

Yes, fixed

Huh? Japan Times isn't state media, it's a regular private newspaper. Japan Times reporting on Japan is akin to the New York Times reporting on New York.

So highly biased and lapdogs of the ruling elite then?

If you're the sort of person who feels better thinking such things, sure. The point is that any biases are the paper's biases, not (necessarily) the state's.

Can't be any worse than any news outlet in America reporting on America.

In certain cities in the United States going to jail for shooting and killing someone is something of a networking retreat for criminals. You plead down to manslaughter and may serve less than 3 years. Great way to jumpstart your career and gain credibility on the streets.

I need to see some evidence of these claims. I doubt that prison is materially similar to a "networking retreat". Are people really pleading down to manslaughter, after literally shooting and killing someone, and serving less than 3 years?

The large numbers of prison gangs is evidence of the networking function. And in gang ridden neighborhoods most murders aren’t even solved, and 3 years happens regularly, because of the low evidence an lack of witness cooperation causing prosecutors to cut plea bargains.

I agree with the GP; I'd need to see some evidence.

> in gang ridden neighborhoods

Gangs are no longer a problem in most American cities, afaik. It's a obsolete myth in the minds of people who never step foot in poor and working-class urban neighborhoods, but they see lots of TV and movies.

You don't see Crips and Bloods wearing colors but in the several cities I've spent significant time in, there are organized drug-dealing operations with management hierarchy. That, to me, is a gang.

How would you know those things without being in that 'business'? The current drug problem is disproportionately rural, as far as I know. Crime in cities is at lows going back decades. Again, gang-ridden, drug-dealer filled cities is an obsolete notion among those who don't live in them.

3 years for manslaughter ? That seems a very, very low sentence for taking a life.

Be careful when you react this way. This kind of thinking leads to mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenses, shoplifting, and all kinds of petty crimes that aren't typically perpetrated by hardened criminals with violent tendencies. It's the kind of thinking that fills our prisons with people who really belong in therapy or a psych ward.

Killing someone is bad, very bad. But murder charges should be reserved for people who planned to kill someone that day versus being driven to do so in the moment. On its face it might not seem like there's a difference, but there is. It's like the difference between yelling at someone for cutting you off in traffic versus planning exactly how you're going to yell at your boss when you quit in pique. It's the heat of the moment versus the calculation of premeditation.

People do take advantage of the way our justice system judges you partly on intent, but I think that's an essential part of a humane justice system, and some people will always take advantage of our humanity. And I think if we look at the mechanics of plea bargains, this kind of abuse is probably rife. But I don't think the answer is to raise the minimum sentence. I think the answer is to prosecute the correct charges and to prove intent and planning. Or to accept that many of the killings in question really are perpetrated in the heat of the moment and not out of some cunning plan on the part of the killer.

The victim sees no difference in either of your examples, so I'm having a hard time agreeing fully.

Scenario A: you are at a bar and someone starts a fight with you. You fight back and due to unfortunate circumstances they fall and hit their head in such a way that they die.

Scenario B: you are angry at your neighbor for always taking your parking lot. So you acquire a gun, and in the middle of the night you sneak over to his house, break in, and shoot him while he's sleeping.

Two dead victims, two very different sets of circumstances. Should both those cases be prosecuted as murder? Given the same sentence?

I was imagining a scenario of "crime of passion" e.g. when someone catches their wife in bed with another man. Murder is murder.

Self-defense obviously changes that paradigm completely, and because of that, I'd consider that example moving the goalposts of this discussion

Crimes of passion aren't prosecuted as murder in many jurisdictions. They're prosecuted as manslaughter. The killer didn't plan to kill anyone, but they were provoked to do so by the other parties.

That's why we have judges.

Here we are talking about yakuza, organized crime, not Joe or Jane having one bad moment in life.

Let's say it this way: imagine it was not prison, but a full therapy treatment and rehabilitation. Do you think that 3 years is enough to rehabilitate an adult that all the events in life lead him or her to kill somebody ?

Some people take 10 years to quit smoking.

Also, while I agree with your point on abusing the justice system and not using it for revenge, you must not forget that:

- currently we also use it as a deterrent system. Even if it doesn't work very well. If somebody is capable of killing someone else, there is a huge different between knowing you will pay 3 years or 10 for it. 3 years to get a reputation or get rid of a life road block could be calculated as an acceptable price.

- there is also the way the non-killers will see the system. If people are being honest, and they witness more and more than being a criminal has not the consequences they though is should have, then people will loose any trust they have in the system. It's a very bad long term side effect to have for a society. Really, really bad.

A murderer will murder, regardless of whether they are in prison for 1 year or 100 years afterward, they are not apt to estimate what a judge will give them for a particular crime. Deterrence for higher level crimes through harsher sentencing is ineffective.

You are talking in absolute, and this is rarely true.

What's "a murderer" ? Are all of them equals ?

Do you think a Yakuza and a an person wanting an inheritance have the same views on violence ?

And what if you have a one year sentence ? One month ? One week ? None ? Do you think there would be no difference ?

It would be great if we had some evidence to back this up.

Sentence is more like ten years, parole in three. Manslaughter unlike murder is supposed to be unintentional. Of course if the criminals are "networking" in prison, that should prevent parole, but cost-cutting privatization in the prison industry has ensured that doesn't happen. Likewise the only reason that it's a manslaughter charge in the first place is that witness protection, and therefore cooperation, is dismal. Simply put the legitimacy of the US government has declined in some areas, although this process really kicked off in the 1960s.

  the legitimacy of the US government

Homicide is very rarely charged as a Federal crime (special cases like assassination or terrorism).

I didn't say federal government, now did I? My point is that when people don't respect the authorities, we refer to this as the "legitimacy of the government" and because no state was specified I went with US, because all states and their governments are part of the US. So yes I anticipated your semantic quibble.

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