Japan’s 99% Conviction Rate [audio]
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
A youtuber interviewed a trial lawyer [1] last year and I thought it was really good. I wasn't aware that the holding days could be extended for each crime that you "commit." There's an entire scheme to this:
3 days - initial detainment
10 days - judge determines whether you can be charged or not
10 days - possible extension.
Basically, don't come to Japan and do anything questionable and everything should be fine. In the unlikely event you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, you should know how to wield Japanese well to try to get yourself out of it.
On the other hand, I watched an interaction between a couple of foriegners and the police one day. They were drinking in the park one day (legal and common) and the police were called on them for unknown reasons. After the police arrived, they basically told the police to go away for an hour and refused to show their resident's card (both also legal). Backups and backups of backups were called and eventually they dispersed. I think this is a good example of how there is a lot of restraint with regards to police here. I believe in most other countries jail would have been imminent out of disrespect.
The thing about Japan is that once you're caught up in the system, it has no mercy.
Do you mean legal residents, or not showing their ID is legal? Because if police ask for a foreigner's resident card, they have to present it. [1, Q41]
[1] http://www.immi-moj.go.jp/newimmiact_1/en/q-and-a_page2.html
If yes, they must provide the reason. [1] At that point, you may have to show them your card depending on the circumstances. They may leave you alone, however.
My experience: I was once taking photos in a dark alley for some cyberpunk type shots around 9 p.m. I was approached by two officers who asked, "What are you doing here?" Kind of a trick question, because then they said, "Oh, you speak Japanese. Do you have your resident's card?"
I complied here because of the optics. After complying to show my card, my bag and me were fully searched which I was not okay with. After that I experience, I became well acquainted with my rights because, at that time, I did know them well.
1 - https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/04/02/issues/rig...
[1]'s source / reference: http://www.debito.org/shokumushitsumon.html
Police have almost unlimited power in Japan, and gaijin have no rights at all. Japanese citizens have some, but in general will not exercise them due to their cultural upbringing.
> I believe in most other countries jail would have been imminent out of disrespect.
Is this part accurate? In the (admittedly few) countries where I have spent a lot of time and have gained any real experience dealing with the police, they have proven to have a relatively genial and pro-community outlook, aiming more to help people and prevent harm, rather than browbeating and abusing people.
My impression is that the so-called offence of "contempt of cop" (i.e. being arrested for being a smart-ass or upsetting a cop's feelings, rather than any genuine breach of the law or peace) is a bit of a North American phenomenon, but no doubt my perception is being affected by sampling bias there, having been exposed to American media etc.
In my (non-American) experience, you must push things incredibly far to get anything more than a sarcastic laugh or eye-roll or "move along, mate" from a cop.
correlates with my experience as well.
In regards to my comment of "most other countries," I believe 'most' could be changed to 'many'
Is this not similar to calling for more medical or legal ethics classes?
Expecting police to be stewards of the community is the same as expecting ICANN to be stewards of the web — it’s a lot of unchecked moral assumptions for how things are supposed to work, rather than structuring a result to happen. It’s also a failure to discuss the imperatives created by who feeds whom, and why moral presumption of police workings should matter in the face of that.
Americans believe it is the structure of their federal government which generates stressful imperatives for different bodies to behave “well”. What structure guides any faith or optimism that police will be stewards of the community?
Have American police been generating a lot of faith and optimism recently?
But I honestly don't think its their fault. A working justice system would mean a) getting arrested is no big deal, and b) cops are held accountable for their excesses.
(The system is broken because of capacity, complexity of law, powerful police unions, and voter apathy and ignorance)
Ironically, given the discussion about Japanese cops, I refer to it by a Japanese term: kirisute-gomen, "the privilege to cut and leave". If you were a commoner and offended a samurai, the samurai had the legal right to kill you with his sword and didn't even have to report it (hence "cut and leave".) Samurai also used live commoners as swordsmanship practice dummies, but this practice was nominally illegal (still rarely enforced though).
And that's what cops are in the USA: a special privileged warrior class with rights to use violence indiscriminately that commoners do not have.
Wow. You are right on the money. So well put and so succinct. This isn't just a problem with cops though. It's in the culture at large. People in power not only expect to hurt others and fuck them over, but also that others should be grateful for being fucked over. Got passed up for the promotion / raise and instead got more responsibility with no increase in pay? You should be thankful you still got a job. Got wrongfully arrested, charged, and offered a plea deal to go to jail for something you didn't do? You should be grateful for the 5 year prison deal. You'll get 30 years at trial. Oh you're innocent? We don't care. Got overcharged by a company for a bill that's not even in your name? You should be thankful you can spend two hours a day every day for two weeks on the phone trying to get the charges reversed before they send you to collections. Got invaded by the US and millions of your citizens slaughtered? You should be thankful and grateful for the US bringing "freedom" to your country. The "freedom" to thank the US for killing your family. In all of these cases and so much more, the victim is expected to be thankful to their perpetrator while the perpetrator is fucking over the victim. It's a huge part of American culture and the police are just one example of it.
That's the core of police country idea.
My limited experience/awareness of Eastern European countries - you do not disrespect the police... oh boy, you do not :O
You read how it’s basically a “police state” but the reality is the people argue and yell at the cops all the time!
Cops in China seem to almost have no authority in regular interactions. My local coworkers would basically just ignore their commands and talk back to them.
Granted, I was in Shanghai and the people I was with were middle class locals, so perhaps that’s why the interactions were like that.
Still, if I acted that way back home, I know I would have been arrested.
Maybe things are better in NZ but I would not experiment with "contempt of cop" here in Sydney unless I had a nice clear schedule and didn't mind spending a bit of time behind bars.
It probably depends on where you are too. I witnessed a guy beating his kids with a belt in full public view outside a Chick Fil A two blocks from Times Square - the police had no interest at all in chasing it up.
At which point I pointed out that there is reasonable chastisement and beating a cowering kid with a belt.
Where have you been?
I live in a place where cops are no angels, but no, they won't kick you out of park without being able to state reason. That example is not restraint of cop, that is abuse of power by cops example.
And possibly not first attempt to prevent them what people of different race can do which is possibly why they did not cooperated at first.
This logic could be used for any country, no? It doesn't exactly absolve Japan of their screwed up legal system.
According to Wikipedia:
>In Canada, the national conviction rate is about 97%. This does not include cases in which the charges are dropped, which comprise about one-third of criminal cases. Absent Quebec, the province with the lowest conviction rate, the figure is 99%.
If a country has a low conviction rate, it could be because cops are arresting lots of innocent people. It could be because courts are being bribed and letting people go. High conviction rates can mean anything from police only arresting people when they know a person is guilty, to them picking up anyone off the street and throwing them away without a fair trial. Percentage alone, generally, isn't something worth looking into.
The linked audio is only 9 minutes long, and it addresses this exact point. The Wikipedia figure for Canada is wrong. The straight acquittal rate is ~3%, but the other 97% are not convictions, only about 60% are.
They also interview a professor who authored a book on the Japanese justice system who explains why the conviction rate is so high. It turns out we can answer questions like this without relying on uninformed guesses by HN commenters. Amazing.
I've observed what happens in Australia (wasn't me personally, but someone I know). Charged with a crime for which the evidence was rather weak/debatable. His family could afford a good barrister and expert witnesses. As soon as the defence expert witness finishes demolishing the prosecution's case from the witness stand, the prosecution move for the case to be dismissed.
It was very obvious that if he had been a poor person, whose family couldn't afford to pay many $10,000s on good lawyers and expert witnesses, the prosecution would have won the case. But I think that's their technique. Charge lots of people, some of whom are well-resourced enough to cast doubt on the prosecution's case, others are not. Fold against the former, win against the later. So long as they get enough of the later and not too much of the former, pat themselves on the back for meeting their targets.
The wikipedia article isn't really wrong. Only 60% of the cases go before a jury. The conviction rate for cases that get to the jury around the 95% rate.
> They also interview a professor who authored a book on the Japanese justice system who explains why the conviction rate is so high.
Yes. Pretty much prosecutors only prosecute cases they think they'll win and have leverage over defendants. The same issue you have in Canada and we have in the US.
> It turns out we can answer questions like this without relying on uninformed guesses by HN commenters.
Too bad you didn't choose bother to answer any of the questions.
You'd have a point if the stat about Japan was about the conviction rate of people who go before a jury, but unless I'm mistaken, the conviction rate we're talking about is that of people _charged_ overall.
That 60% figure in Canada is precisely referring to people who were charged, and whose charges were later dropped. Over 99.4% of people charged in Japan are eventually convicted.
Consider what it means to be charged. This allows for example the police to gather more information by doing what would otherwise infringe on someone's rights. So when you basically never drop charges, that means that either you infringe on people's privacy before they're charged, or you routinely disregard whatever exculpatory evidence you find. Either way, it's obviously bad.
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."
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...
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.
And of course - nobody is entirely innocent. Knowing that once charged you're almost certainly going to be convicted, perhaps suspects cooperate more in hope for leniency.
I mean, I doubt law enforcement are angels in japan, but I can imagine fairly benign factors contributing too.
Frankly - give how pervasive such high numbers are across much of the world, I'd say the argument for the efficacy of a confrontational legal system is undermined; clearly it's not working ideally.
The Canadian criminal trial lawyer interviewed for this podcast specifically stated that if your case goes all the way to an actual trial, your chances (statistically) are 50/50.
She also stated that the rate Wikipedia reports for Canada isn't useful because the way it comes to this number is wrong and misleading.
Please actually listen to the podcast before spreading misinformation.
Maybe the Canadian justice system is worth a look at too. I am not saying that such a conviction rate would always mean the same thing. Canada after all has a reputation for being one of the most civilized places. But it's certainly interesting to see why this might be the case. In Japan the reasons for this that are typically cited aren't very nice ones and it is those reasons that make the case against Japan on this, not necessarily the statistics themselves.
(And this is why Wikipedia needs to be taken with a grain of salt)
It's not
> [In 2009,] 97 percent of federal cases and 94 percent of state cases end in plea bargains, with defendants pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence.
Probably a lot more than we'd like to admit.
> just because they don't have the resources to fight the charges.
It's not just that they don't have the resources. It's also a matter of risk assessment because a jury can be fickle. Lets say you have 20% chance of conviction and 80% chance of acquittal. The prosecutor offers you a plea deal for 1 year ( you get out in 6 months with good behavior ). If you choose to go to trial, the prosecutor says he is going to charge you with everything he can and if found guilty, you go to prison for 25 years. What do you do? You have 20% chance of spending quarter century in prison. Or you have 100% chance of 6 months ( 1 year at the max )? I think most people would choose the latter.
> Quite perverse incentives.
In a way. The system incentivizes plea deals because the prosecutor doesn't want to lose cases. So he only wants to try cases that are open and shut and go the plea deal route with the rest.
Jury trials are expensive as fuck, and you don't get a penny of it back if you win.
The most common offenses charged are less-serious things like DUI, where first offenders are likely to receive penalties like a fine, maybe a very short community service, and probation.
If you go to trial, you always might lose, and you will pay $50k of legal fees.
If the prosecutor offers you a $10k fine, what're you going to do?
Even if you could raise the $50k -- of you go to trial and lose (which is always possible), you are likely to get close to the maximum penalty for having fought.
Consider this: Japan was a medieval society 152 years ago and then an Imperial militarist state that has modernised under US occupation. They're still quite strict and traditionalist today, like to enforce conformity.
I don't understand how you can
1. Arrest someone who doesn't want to be arrested;
2. Hold them in prison against their will;
and then
3. Bill them for it.
A fine is one thing, but stipulating that they did nothing wrong, how can they owe you money?
3: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-to-stay_(imprisonment)
As for "they did nothing wrong", in the USA people who don't have money for bail are held in jail until trial, which can be for many months, or even years in some cases. https://www.americasquarterly.org/aborn-prisons There are stories of prosecutors going to people held pending trial and offering them a deal: plead guilty, accept time served, and be out tomorrow, or maintain your innocence and carry on waiting for your trial in jail.
Not great, but what I'm complaining about here is people who are held in jail, released (after an acquittal or just a judgment that there was no good reason to pick them up in the first place), and then billed for having the temerity to be held against their will. This is not how commercial exchanges normally work. It also isn't how criminal punishments work, since -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- there is no pretense that these people did anything wrong.
> In 2017-2018, 3.6 % of criminal cases in adult courts led to acquittal, but 62 % led in a guilty decision, and 1/3 were withdrawn or subject to a crown stay.
To be fair in their comparison, they should have mention withdrawals in the Japanese courts. In 2016, 62.4% of the criminal charges were withdrawn[^1].
So, comparing the conviction rate on the initial charges (meaning that withdrawal of charges in taken into account):
Canada: 62% of the initial charges led to a conviction
Japan: 38%
Comparing the conviction rate excluding withdrawal:
Canada: 95% (62 out of 65.6)
Japan: 99%
As noted in the BBC audio and pointed in the article, Japan's system is unfair, but I think the rest of the comparison in the audio was biased.
[^1]: https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...
[edit: messed up the 62% of Canada]
There was a story a number of years ago about a cyber criminal who hacked victims computers to commit crimes, and then taunted the police about it after they forced false confessions from the hapless owners.
Afaik he’s still in the country looking for work. So maybe it’s different for foreigners ( I wouldn’t he surprised if that’s the case )
A low conviction rate implies that a lot of shaky cases with poor evidence are being brought. This exposes innocent people to the inconvenience and expense of mounting a defense and to the possibility of a false conviction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate#India
"The national conviction rate in India for offences of the Indian Penal Code is around 46%. This tends to vary state by state. The state with the highest conviction rate is Kerala, at about 84%, while the one with the lowest rate is Bihar, at around 10%."
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/japan-s-c...
Of course it's much more complex in reality, but that's the gist.
Horrible, and seemingly unconstitutional:
"No person shall be compelled to testify against himself. Confession made under compulsion, torture or threat, or after prolonged arrest or detention shall not be admitted in evidence. No person shall be convicted or punished in cases where the only proof against him is his own confession."[0]
[0] Article 38 of the Japanese Constitution: https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_ja...
The common explanation is that without plee bargains the American system would have a similar conviction rate and thus one should not be too surprised. Unless one wishes their government prosecuted more people without hard evidence. TV shows may pull exonorating evidence ou of a hat but that is not real life.
wikipedia's take:
'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.'
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...
It's whole point is to delve neutrally into the numbers put out by different organisations to evaluate and explain the claims.
Given that scrutiny of UK organisations is the norm for it, and that a 99% conviction rate is a headline figure that would more normally be associated with somewhere like North Korea and which begs explanation, it's difficult to see what the problem is here?
And you make a lot of assumptions. 99% could mean a terrible system, or one where only solid cases are pursued. 80% could mean a robust trial system, or lots of shoddy cases pursued by a risk taking, politicized prosecution system.
Your point about the Daily Mail is lost on me - perhaps you could point to an alternative podcast on statistics that does a less biased job, so I can see the same nationalist perspective as you are seeing, and understand the value of your objection?
I find the notion that it has resulted in anything positive at all in the UK, to be quite ludicrous.
A system that only pursues "solid" cases is a terrible system because it leaves many people without justice.
Both here in the States and in Japan, as well as elsewhere, a lot of the reason for the high conviction rate is understaffing. It's a combination of (a) not enough time and money to bring all cases to trial, and (b) only bringing the obviously guilty cases all the way to trial. Guilty pleas are everything. (I'm not saying that's a good thing, because it isn't, but it's the reality.) Approximately 97% of federal felony convictions result from pleas.
As a prosecutor, I felt far far more like a negotiator than a litigator. In one year, I handled approximately 700 cases and had only 2 trials. (Not all of the rest were convictions; many were moved to alternative resolutions (i.e., drug treatment programs), and a few were dismissed.) 700 cases in one year is an unethical number of cases, but what could anyone do? We were only paid ~$40,000 per year (on top of massive loan debt) and they still couldn't afford to hire more. Public defenders were similarly overworked. Hence the pleas, and the high conviction rates.
The do mention it all the time.
Having said that, said rights are less of an issue than in the US simply because we don't jail as many people, by far. It's shocking how easy it is to end up in jail for the average person in the US. Just failing to pay a ticket you didn't even know you ever got because it was ripped off from your car and the court summons was served to the wrong person can land you in jail in the US, but that doesn't happen in France.
Do you have a reliable cite for this please?