Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

He is rich and able, I would have done the same if I was in his shoes so I don't judge him from moral perspective. I'm on the same page with the Germans on this one, i.e. it shouldn't be a crime and it's not wrong to escape from prison.

That said, not being him, I really don't like the narrative built around how Japanese prisons are horrible and it's justified to not serve for crimes in Japan. I also wonder if the "Japanese prisons and legal system are not good" editorials were coordinated.

IMHO, if Japanese system is that bad, People should stop going to Japan or take action to fix it for everyone instead of normalising the getting of scott-free for the elite.

View on HN

> it's not wrong to escape from prison.

Uh, yes it is. Maybe if you’re imprisoned illegally (kidnapping or by kangaroo court) but in the general case—in a democracy with actual courts, it’s wrong.

You think the cartel bosses that escaped from Mexico’s prisons were not morally and ethically wrong on multiple levels? Just because there’s also some corruption in the gov? Or because the prisons aren’t great. That’s unreasonable

meh it's the shit that got them in there that was wrong. it may give us the justification to hold them prisoner but they still aren't morally required to not escape. like it's up to the judge what sentence they get so how could that even be a moral obligation?

I think the burden for imprisonment and compelling people to stay in prison is on the punishers.

That should not be confused with the crimes being wrong, I'm talking about ones desire not to be imprisoned being a natural desire and acting on it not being wrong by itself.

There are major issues with Japan's justice system though . I mean just reading the link on this thread made me sad

Michael Taylor. Mr. Taylor pleaded guilty to aiding Mr. Ghosn’s escape and started a two-year sentence at Tokyo’s Fuchu Prison in the summer of 2021; he spends much of his day in solitary confinement.

Just in case the folks reading this comment don't see what's so bad about solitary confinement: Prolonged solitary confinement amounts to psychological torture, says UN expert https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2020/02/united-state...

I think the argument here is that being in prison is a bad experience and wanting to escape is normal, natural human behaviour. As such, the onus is not on the prisoner to stay inside, but on the guards to keep them there. Escaping is, as such, not a crime in itself.

Evading a punishment is pretty universally seen as a crime, not sure why you'd think otherwise.

Because it's a natural instinct to seek freedom. It's in human nature. Like, expecting a prisoner to keep sitting in their cell when suddenly all doors spring open is ridiculous.

Sure it’s a natural instinct, but society as a whole views it as ethically, morally, and legally “wrong”. We don’t allow individual’s selfish motives to rule society in other areas.

Either way, the person I was responding to did not say it was a natural desire, they only said it was “not wrong”.

I guess there are different levels on which you can look at this. If a rapist escapes from prison I certainly don't celebrate that. I want him to get captured again as quickly as possible. But I do not think it should add anything to his sentence, at least not for the attempt itself. If he hurt anyone, broke/stole something on his way out that's a different issue.

Not in Germany, apparently.

I can think of at least one nation that disagrees: Germany.

To quote Wikipedia "In some other places like Germany and a number of other countries, it is considered human nature to want to escape from a prison and it is considered as a violation of the right of freedom, so escape is not penalized in itself (in the absence of other factors such as threats of violence, actual violence, or property damage)."

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_escape

Not in most countries.

japanese democracy has a lot of "clauses"

I've read that Japanese prosecutors win something like 98% of the cases they bring. If true, it suggests that either they let a lot of crimes go unprosecuted in Japan, which doesn't ring true, or that their police have godlike powers of investigation and discernment (ditto), or that the adversarial court system really is a bit too adversarial from the defendant's point of view.

So I can't say I wouldn't have done the same as Ghosn, given the necessary resources. Right or wrong wouldn't be a consideration, as long as I could rationalize an assumption of bad faith on the courts' part.

Edit: I guess it could also suggest that the police in Japan are hopeless fuckups who only manage to catch the most flagrantly-incompetent criminals. That doesn't sound any more realistic than the other possibilities IMO.

It would be fucked up if prosecutors weren't winning well over 90% of their cases, because being prosecuted is a punishment in and of itself --- it's ruinously expensive. So you'd very much hope prosecution is reserved for slam-dunk cases, as federal prosecution is in the US, where prosecutors also have a ~95% success rate.

They alternative, where prosecutors lose so many cases that their win rate goes down into the 70's or 60's, implies that prosecutors are taking lots of flyers just see how the cases shake out. That would be a tremendous abuse.

All of those options are true, but you forgot the forced confessions. 30 days detention before charging is long enough for the bruises to heal. On the other hand, they prosecute far less crime across all categories than in the United States.

The staff of prosecutors is much smaller in Japan, so it likely means they mostly prosecute the winnable cases. In contrast in the US, a district attorney might choose to prosecute cases which make themself more electable.

From what I've read, I suspect both those things are true: lots of crimes go unprosecuted, as well as the police having godlike powers.

But - FWIW - prosecutors in the US tend to have win rates north of 90% as well. 98% is excessively high, yes, but we're talking single digit percentages compared to a country with comparatively more crime.

There is an unfortunate effect that that kind of success record produces:

The judge figures that you must be guilty, or they wouldn't be charging you.

There's an old baseball story, where Rogers Hornsby (one of the greatest hitters of all time) is up, a pitch comes in, and the ump calls it a ball. The catcher turns around to complain.

The ump says "Young man, if that was a strike, Mr. Hornsby would have swung at it."

It's actually more than 99% conviction rate with some sources [1] saying 99.9%.

A great movie on the Japanese judicial system is I just didn't do it (Soredemo boku wa yattenai) [2] It's a phenomenal movie but really shows that Japan has a real issues.

Given that if I were Ghosn, I'd have escaped too, there was no way for him to get a fair trial in Japan.

[1] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c... [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0794350/

The US has a lower prosecution rate because they “shoot first and ask questions later.” That is, prosecutors are more aggressive in just trying to blame someone… anyone… whether guilty or not by using plea deals. Of course conviction rate suffers because there is such a high percentage of false accusations that refuse plea bargains.

So you completely missed the case that Japan’s conviction rate is high because they may only prosecute people when there is actual evidence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com