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Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

> On that note: Japanese police don't play games. You do not have a right to a speedy trial, there is no jury of your peers, and they can hold you as long as they'd like. The phrase "police brutality" does not translate into Japanese.

In 2024, US police shot and killed 1,173 people [1]. That's 0.35 deaths per 100,000 Americans.

In 2022, Japan had 289 homicides, or 0.23 per 100,000 people [2].

I.e., an American is more likely to be shot by police than a Japanese person is likely to be killed by a murderer.

I don't speak Japanese, but if "police brutality" does not translate into Japanese, then maybe that's because such a thing is unthinkable in Japan.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

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Do you think that physical violence is the only sort of thing that police can unjustly inflict upon you?

I love Japan, have spent a significant quantity of time there, and if I was a billionaire, it'd be the place where I bought the penthouse luxury apartment. So if anything, I am very favorably biased towards the country.

But it also has a 99% conviction rate, and not because their police are so stellar that they always get the perpetrator on the first try. They hold you for extended periods of time and the system is set up to extract confessions. We know that people are weak to being coerced into false confessions even in countries where there is significantly less pressure and attempts to get them out of you.

Also plenty of laws that have penalties that would be considered quite harsh compared to much of the western world - simple possession of pot can get you 5 years in prison, and intent to distribute/profit can get you 10 - and personal stash levels are plenty to bump you into that range.

There's also the other interpretation that prosecutors don't ... prosecute ... unless they're 99% sure they'll win.

It's a bit of both.

Police aren't going to arrest you unless they're pretty sure the charges are going to stick, but once you're in custody, they are... well, let's just say "highly motivated" in getting you to sign a confession, and they have a great deal of leeway that is unavailable in the US.

> I.e., an American is more likely to be shot by police than a Japanese person is likely to be killed by a murderer.

Many parts of the US are stuck in a bad equilibrium where there is lots of police violence and lots of crime, because the police violence is targeted on the basis of ethnicity rather than whether someone's actually breaking the law or committing antisocial behavior.

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