The fact that your article starts with a fallacy (the bayonet training part) doesn't help its credibility...
It is also slightly off topic. The original article talks about catching criminals, yours talk about conviction. The issue is about what constitutes rape in Japan, not the effectiveness of the Police.
There is still an interesting bit in the original article : "The hunt for things to do may sometimes be beneficial. The number of reported cases of children being abused at home has almost doubled since 2010, despite the declining birth rate. That suggests the police are increasingly intervening in the domestic sphere, which they used to avoid.". It means that we might see an improvement when it comes to domestic violence (which can include rape).
I would caution anyone reading this top-voted comment to look at any other story about crime stats in Japan. This knee-jerk response about manipulated statistics is almost always in the response. If you don’t think crime is exceptionally low in Japan, go spend a year or two outside Tokyo and get back to us.
I lived in Osaka, which is ostensibly the crime capital of Japan, for a few months. I have never felt more safe in my entire life. Yes, there were the characteristic Yakuza businesses, but I would have been surprised if I dropped my passport at 2 am and it wasn't returned.
I grew up next to (literally) the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters. Never once did I feel unsafe there, or anywhere else in Japan. It really is a night and day difference.
This is 20 years old, but there is something weird about Japanese crime statistics. They might not be as good as much of a low crime society as commonly stated: http://sci-hub.la/10.2307/29766810 (Is Japan Exceptional? Reconsidering Japanese Crime Rates)
This is purely anecdotal but my sister lived in Japan for many years, and she tells me that the policing there is very... uneven, I guess you'd describe it. The police won't get too involved in anything that's not a sure bet to be solved (eg. unexpected deaths are very likely to be written off as suicide) but on the flip side, once they accuse you of something the conviction rate is near 100%. Also if you get a speeding ticket you have to write an apology letter saying how sorry you are, as well as pay the fine.
For those interested in this, there is a very good Japanese movie whose English title is "I just didn't do it". "Based on a true story, the film focuses on the story of a young man charged with groping on a train. Following the events depicted in the film, he was confirmed innocent and saved from his effective imprisonment after a five-year legal battle." [1]
You'll find in this movie exactly what the parent describes, the apology culture as well as how difficult the system makes it for you once you've been accused of an offense.
Talking about movies, albeit a different kind, swedish movie kopps is a comedy about a city so devoid of crime, the agents starts to make up things to keep their job.
Even though this is really off-topic, Kopps is a great movie, as is Jalla Jalla by the same director the latter being even more off-topic as it has nothing to do with crime nor Japan but is instead a romantic comedy set in Sweden.
A well-functioning criminal justice system should always have a high conviction rate, because part of the police and state prosecution service's job is to ensure that they only bring charges and fight cases they think they can win. Given they're experts in criminal prosecution, you would expect them to get it right 90-95% of the time.
But there's still a lot of variation in how you get to that situation. E.g. how willing are the police to investigate cases that have a low chance of conviction? How willing are they to coerce confessions or fabricate evidence? Is sentencing and plea-bargaining designed to encourage early guilty pleas regardless of innocence? At trial, how willing are judges to lead juries towards a guilty verdict? These kind of issues are at play in every country's criminal justice system, but, for a modern democracy, Japan seems to have a particularly pervasive culture of police intimidation and coercion.
Quick example, you own a gun in your Florida home. Unbeknownst to you, your (idiot) cousin smokes a joint in the driveway before leaving and leaves joint on your table. Neighbors call police, they enter your home (based on smell) and find a gun and a joint. You are looking at 10 YEARS in federal jail [i] as a prohibited gun owner, a few months in county (for the joint), possibly some time in state prison for child endangerment (kids were home), and the CPS took your kids that day. IT DOES NOT MATTER if your are innocent or guilty you will do a plea deal. No jury for you. US prosecutors rely on extremely harsh possible sentences to bully innocent defendants into jail.
This is a great comment. You did miss one requirement to fall into federal jurisdiction:
C. The firearm or ammunition was transported across a state line at any
For you to be caught with clause C the prosecutor just needs to prove the gun wasn't manufactured in your state. Example you own a glock pistol (popular), what you would find is fine print like: "Glocks for sale in the U.S. are made in Austria and assembled in Smyrna GA." Reading that as a defendant would be depressing since it extremely easy to prove - just getting a fax from the company would end it. Then if you look at ammunition, "9mm - 115 Grain FMJ - Tula - 500 Rounds" (as a popular example) you would see fine print such as: "TulAmmo is sourced from eastern countries like Russia and uses wartime-proven methods of manufacturing and material selection in order to make ammunition as affordable and practical as possible".
An attorney's website (i suppose he has experience):
"If the firearm in question was manufactured in a state other than the state in which possession or receipt occurred, a jury may, but are not required to, find that it was transported across a state line." [i]
In all honesty, I think federal prosecutors wont really care about (C) since proving it takes about 10 minutes with a fax machine and they have NEVER seen a case where the gun (and components) and bullets were manufactured in the same state. If they were manufactured in your state I would consider yourself one lucky [expletive].
I don’t get how you see plea bargaining as the evil thing in that scenario. To me, the shock of that scenario comes from the extremely harsh penalties, often for crimes that can stem from negligence.
If you believed the possible punishment were indeed proportional to the crime, would you still be outraged at plea bargaining? And would the same logic apply to any variance reduction strategy (like insurance) or just this one?
"I don’t get how you see plea bargaining as the evil thing in that scenario."
Because you don't get one of the fundamental constitutional rights our country was founded on: The right to a jury. Prosecutors should be forced to face a jury.
And you don’t get that that’s a right, not an obligation. A right can be waived (in return for a consideration), an obligation can’t.
In a plea bargain, the state is recognizing your right to a trial; that’s why they can’t just give you the punishment directly! They are offering a reduced sentence in exchange for you waiving that right. At no point is the right not recognized, unless you think that’s what happens with guilty pleas too.
(Edited to provide explanation rather than funny but confusing skit.)
The problem is the prosecutors have an incentive to rack up as many patently ridiculous charges as possible in an effort to strengthen their position in the plea bargain. Something relatively minor balloons into the possibility you could spend the rest of your life in jail... or you could take the plea and be out in a few years.
That effectively removes your right to a jury trial, particularly when the natural human tendency of a juror is to split the baby, i.e. if you get charged with 60 counts they're unlikely to find you "not guilty" on all 60 regardless of circumstances.
I agree with OP - if the crime isn't important enough to take to trial, it's not important enough to prosecute. Furthermore I would add judges should sanction prosecutors for overcharging. If I have $100k in cash I put into the bank in $5k increments that's one charge of Structuring with a potential five year sentence - I shouldn't be looking at twenty charges with a century in jail if I refuse the plea.
That still seems like more of a problem with overcharging and absurd penalties, rather than plea bargaining. Did you see the question about whether you would feel the same way if the charge and possible punishment were reasonable? Edit: and the comparison to guilty pleas?
If the outcome of the plea bargain is about what the defendant would expect after conviction on reasonable charges, plea bargaining would be fine. But that's fantasyland.
The problem is the incentives are set up such that the charges will not be reasonable. They can't be reasonable, since the state can't possibly afford to take more than a tiny percentage of cases to trial. Which sets up another incentive - the state must make an example out of people who demand a trial to encourage everyone else to take the plea.
I don't know where else to post this question, but why can I not reply to some comments in this thread? For example I can reply to this comment, but I cannot reply to gozur88's comment beneath yours.
To gozur88 if you see this, I am pretty worried about this too, and it seems like a huge violation of our rights that charges can be placed on individuals simply for leverage in a negotiation between the state and the individual. It is actually pretty absurd that we allow any kind of negotiation whatsoever in criminal courts because the usual principles of consent that are usually prerequisites to legally binding negotiations are absent. An individual is threatened with violence and then from that position are not on equal footing with the prosecution.
>I don't know where else to post this question, but why can I not reply to some comments in this thread? For example I can reply to this comment, but I cannot reply to gozur88's comment beneath yours.
There's an increasing delay between when a comment is posted and when you can reply, based on the depth. The idea is to create a "cooldown" period for people who are upset. You would have been able to reply to my comment eventually.
If I understand correctly sometimes there's a delay before you can reply to a comment. I don't think it's "always on", but specifically for threads with a lot of discussion.
Narrowly, you're right: the problem is sentence length, not plea bargaining. But broadly, causality doesn't run that way: states overwhelmingly prefer plea bargains on many levels (DAs want high conviction rates, states want few trials, etc.), so harsh maximum sentences are implemented primarily as a threat to help encourage plea bargains.
Even on a too-crude statistical level we can see the problem: if an innocent person has a 20% chance of being convicted, but the offered plea bargain is 1 year and the maximum sentence is 10 years, innocent people will do better by pleading guilty. The "10 years" is a problem, but it's a consequence of wanting to drive plea bargains.
(The fundamental problem in this case is the 20% chance, but frankly no one seems to have any hope for a system that doesn't regularly convict innocents.)
Yes, states -- and the society in general -- should have a slight preference against going to trial. Trials cost resources, and it makes sense for the body politic to compensate defendants who are willing to save society the expense of a trial that they expect to result in a guilty verdict anyway.
This is why most societies allow guilty pleas in the first place!
A plea bargain is nothing but a guilty plea + certainty about the sentence. If you're okay with guilty pleas but not plea bargains, then you think the introduction of certainty in the sentence makes it somehow worse. That's hard to justify.
I reiterate that the focus on the "plea bargain" part of this whole thing seems misplaced. If anything, it's the part that makes sense; the problem is the high penalties and bad-faith charges, which is what should be penalized.
>if an innocent person has a 20% chance of being convicted, but the offered plea bargain is 1 year and the maximum sentence is 10 years, innocent people will do better by pleading guilty. The "10 years" is a problem, but it's a consequence of wanting to drive plea bargains.
>(The fundamental problem in this case is the 20% chance,
That sounds more like tilting against the windmill of "variance in extreme events". We also have the problem that there's a 1% chance of being in a car accident with tens of thousands of dollars in costs. In most cases, we shrug and say "insure it" -- i.e. trade a small probability of extreme loss for a guaranteed smaller one. Why do we see it as suddenly a problem when people do the same thing in the justice system?
Every legit example of it being a catastrophe turns out to draw its entire badness from some other already-bad part of the justice system, not the plea bargaining.
"And you don’t get that that’s a right, not an obligation"
Horrifying. Ok. So slavery is back in the game. Hey, sign this and if you don't meet the requirements you are a slave -- you are "waiving that right". I am sure you are trolling.... right?
I don't think that plea bargaining is inherently a bad thing, but when there's a massive disparity between the plea-bargained sentence and the normal sentence and especially if the police can start treating suspects like felons even before going to trial (taking kids away, confiscating property, etc.) then there's a large possibility for abuse.
I think a good system would be to offer plea-bargains but only at a set percentage reduction of the original sentence, and only if the suspect isn't under some other form of pressure from the police. That would still encourage people who know the police have a very solid case against them to take the bargain, but not do much to encourage people who think they have a real shot at winning a trial by jury.
> If you believed the possible punishment were indeed proportional to the crime, would you still be outraged at plea bargaining? And would the same logic apply to any variance reduction strategy (like insurance) or just this one?
You mean if there was a fine of $1 per domain (per year?) as opposed to possible felony under CFAA to scrape public documents on the Internet? I don't want to get into moral nihilism or whatever we call it but what is a crime? Why are some acts criminal? What makes them different from a civil suit between two parties?
My entire home regardless of value is protected from creditors in Florida (even if you sue me!), whereas you’re on the hook for your spouses medical bills even after their death in California (community property state).
Will take my Florida chances :)
(This is also why so many wealthy individuals make it their state of residence, besides no state income tax)
Jake Adelstein's book Tokyo Vice was an eye opener in this regard. The amount of effort the cops put into a case has a lot to do with the victim. Non-white foreigners and gangsters aren't worth a lot of trouble, e.g. if they find a dead guy with yakuza tattoos at the bottom of a building it's a suicide. Case closed.
One line from the discussion section of this paper seemed to capture the essence of the concern:
>Although Japan's rate
of homicide is low compared to many other advanced countries, Japan's rate of unexpected deaths including homicides, traffic accidents, industrial accidents, and suicides is near the median among the selected advanced industrial countries.
A group is formed to handle a perceived type of problem - a committee or task force. They triage and rank these problems, then deal with them in decreasing order of determined importance.
Solving each problem has costs, such as disruption to other people's lives - both involved parties and bystanders, but this disruption is seen as a necessary evil. Below a certain threshold of problem, solving problems becomes too expensive, and the cost is greater than the problem-removal benefit. These groups rarely dissolve when they are past this point, due in most cases to the ego of an individual human or small group.
This is a generalization of many concepts, but I've never been sure what to call it.
It's an example of a principle-agent problem, for one. Generally speaking, members of groups make decisions that are better for them than for the group.
If I were to speculate, I think, no, there's still plenty of crime, but like a lot of Japanese culture, it's dealt with informally by the group. To actually go to the police is an admission your local culture or group can't harmonize what happened, so you need to have harmony forced on you. That doesn't mean actual innocent or guilt; just that harmony is maintained.
If it ever has to escalate to the police in that kind of culture, it's something really serious that the normal means of informal dealing and restitution won't work at all. And the mindset when that happens is dangerous, because the objective can be more "quickly restore harmony by any means necessary" than "find the guilty." Like the old chinese kung-fu movies where they would grab someone, torture him, then make him sign a confession. It's more important to resolve the situation to restore balance than disrupt that to right wrongs.
Again, this is real speculation, but Japanese are people too; they don't somehow possess a special human nature that removes all the nasty emotional impetus behind crime.
I wouldn't be surprised if this is partially the case, but the homicide rate suggests to me that there is also a significantly lower amount of (serious) crime - it seems difficult and unlikely that murder would or could be handled without involving authorities.
During the recent gun crime argument in the wake of the Vegas shooting in the US, someone pointed to Japan as an example of strict gun laws.
Japan has more than double the suicide rate than the UK, and noticeably higher than the US.
I wonder if some murders in Japan are written up as suicides in order to close the case quickly?
Plus I would would guess Japanese people are more likely to kill themselves than go on a murder spree of family members or coworkers, but that's just based on what I've seen as an outsider.
Japan is notorious for extreme work ethics.. so a high suicide rate is not surprising.
I'm don't think it's fair to make wild speculation like that without sources. It not like they haven't investigated the high (but also falling) suicide rate:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan
I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me that a village culture would do even that. I couldn't say, though. I just am suspicious when I see outlier stats on something which is fairly universal in human nature.
I experienced exactly the opposite of your comment. Going to the police was the default answer for Japanese. A friend of mine parked his bike in front of his apartment one evening, the police were called and the bike was destroyed by the time he had asked about it the next day.
Indeed! However, asking modern police to do infrastructure work of that sort might be too much. However, what police officer would turn down an opportunity to get trained as a programmer, and then put to work in forensics, workflow, or national cyber defense?
Probably just me, but economist articles never load properly (windows phone, so there's that). Page keeps popping me back up to the top of the article, happened 4 times and then the text disappeared. Oh well.
At least I can infer from the headline that crime is very low in Japan. I wonder what they're doing that the rest of the world aren't
Crime rates are dropping almost everywhere; the exceptions are short term increases during episodes of societal disruption (e.g. wars).
One of the reasons Japan's rate is so low is that they're ahead of other countries in the race to grow old; the vast majority of crime, and especially violent crime, is committed by young people.
Males are more likely to commit crimes, yes; but not necessarily as much as conviction statistics would suggest. There is systematic under-reporting and under-prosecution of crimes committed by females, which seems to be driven largely by a perception that women are "harmless".
That wouldn't be relevant; Japan is skewing old, but doesn't have a similar gender imbalance.
Edit: to clarify, I am saying that Japan does not have a gender ratio all that different from other countries - meaning that gender differences shed no light on its crime rates. It's an irrelevant statistic.
That's amazing! "A 2013 global study on homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that males accounted for about 96 percent of all homicide perpetrators worldwide."[1]. I wonder what's so unique about Japanese culture that keeps homicide rates by gender in balance?
Youth activity is probably a factor. Some anecdata is that, in Sweden, January is usually the month when violent crime is at a very low point in the year. Young people don’t have any money to go out after spending it on Christmas and New Year’s, and it’s super cold so running around in town sucks.
Please don't violate the guidelines like this. We ban accounts that do.
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
As always, moderators have the final say, take it or leave it. I'm the first to acknowledge that, whether or not I agree with a specific decision.
Interested, though, in a subcomment to see myself sort of likened to a "daily stormer, 4chan, neo-nazi, alt-right psychopath", and that comment apparently not getting censored, despite my flagging.
I'm probably just being thick, but the ruleset is not immediately obvious to me.
Other comments are not the guidelines, the guidelines are the guidelines. Introducing a flamewar topic without anything (new or otherwise) to say about it is mentioned explicitly.
In this case, however, I don't need to be. A simple look at statistics will do fine.
Another hint: It is not native young Swedes who have suddenly gone on a rampage and turned shootings, killings, and the occasional grenade into mundane, everyday background-noise in places like Malmø.
Interesting! Are you implicitly claiming non-Chtistmas-celebrating individuals are inherently less moral than Christmas-celebrating counterparts? I would love a citation to a survey of scientific studies supporting this claim. Mostly because I'm pretty sure it's bogus.
No, he's implicitly claiming that the crimes are disproportionally committed by immigrants and refugees, who are disproportionally not Christian. The following article (note the URL), after mutch hemming and hawing, manages to spit out the sentence:
According to the most recent study, people from foreign backgrounds are 2.5 times more likely to be suspected of crimes than people born in Sweden to Swedish-born parents.
Rapidly qualified by statements about income of course: In a later study, researchers at Stockholm University showed that the main difference in terms of criminal activity between immigrants and others in the population was due to differences in the socioeconomic conditions in which they grew up in Sweden.
Crying RACIST! at everyone who points this out may be effective in silencing them but it doesn't make it any less true, and it doesn't make the pro-immigration side any less obligated to explain why Sweden is obligated to accept this. It may well be that it's the right thing to do, but using accusations of racism instead of actual moral reasoning, such as, "if we didn't accept them they would be persecuted" is intellectually dishonest.
Nope, he said the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by one group, not that one group is disproportionally represented in the violent crime statistics. Big difference, and it makes him completely wrong and it either reflects poorly on your reading comprehension or you're somehow trying to polish his blatantly racist statement in dishonest ways.
No, I am not. I am claiming - or reporting, rather - that violent crime has escalated vastly in certain parts of Sweden, and that immigrants almost exclusively are behind this escalation.
And you determined this, how? First hand observation and reporting? Raw reported data (which can have racial bias, if the majority culture reports higher against immigrants or minorities), or what?
You made a bold claim regarding religious practice, and to my view you are now moving the goalposts by adding refugee/minority status into the claim. Should I assume no formal metastudies?
From simple following of daily news. From frequent visits to Malmø over the years. From Malmø friends who are leaving or have already left because the situation is getting out of hand. From top officials in the Malmø police force, who report themselves unable to cope with the escalation. From the official Swedish bureau of statistics, whose numbers are crystal clear.
Also, I do of course realize that this discussion is pointless and impossible, even in the supposedly rational environment of HN.
So far, the only rebuttal I have seen has been "racist dick".
Sweden doesn't record religion in the census. I'm very interested in seeing your source for your statements.
And "the vast majority of violent crimes" does not mean that one group is more disproportionally represented. Don't throw around words you don't understand, such as "majority".
And I am waiting for someone to come out and contradict me. Stating either that violent crime in Sweden has not gone up, or that it isn't perpetrated by those I claim are the foremost perpetrators. Or both.
Japan may have political “stability,” but it by no means has a low rate of corruption. Aside from the constant back room dealing where politicians hand out government contracts to their friends and supporters, Abe Shinzo’s party also has long standing ties to organized crime in Japan.
And the “stability” itself is the result of American intelligence services intervention in their political system(dating back to the occupation) to undermine any leftist challenge to conservative rule.
You can read about both circumstances in Tim Weiner’s book on the CIA, “Legacy of Ashes.”
Scholars say that the system in Japan almost never breeds dependence, and they suggest that the Japanese approach has emphasized the work ethic and the importance of family ties.
Caseworkers rigorously check applicants and drop by their homes regularly to make sure that they do not have banned luxuries like cars or air conditioners, and fraud seems extremely rare.
Japan does have two elements of a social welfare program that far surpass anything in the United States: universal medical care and comprehensive day care.
Everyone has access to doctors and hospitals at affordable prices, with the services free for the poor. And neighborhood nurseries throughout Japan provide excellent care for children from six months old to school age, if mothers work, for a modest fee that is waived for low-income families.
Only 1% Japanese births are to unwed mothers. That compares with 30% of USA.
''The Japanese have a tendency to regard it as extremely shameful to receive welfare, and so they are hesitant,'' said Toshio Hata, a senior welfare official in Kawasaki.
An applicant who owns a home is normally advised to sell it and use the proceeds until the money runs out -- and then to apply again. In May, a 96-year-old man was dropped from welfare because it came to light that he had $30,000 in savings. The caseworker told him to use that up and then reapply.
A welfare worker has a caseload of about 60 in Japan, and there is time for regular, unscheduled visits to recipients' homes. The caseworkers have great discretion in handling cases, as well as considerable moral authority in advising recipients what to do.
Actually the welfare system is pretty extensive, but many people who need help are hesitant to use it.
To quote of one of the guys in the article you linked: ''I could have used it, but I have too much pride,''. That quote sums up a good chunk of Japanese culture.
I'm definitely far from knowledgeable on the Japanese welfare system (though that article is from 1996) but at least health care and education seem really cheap (and mandatory). As for the livelihood assistance part of welfare, it seems mostly old people make use of it (since unemployment is so low 2.8% in Japan) - which would link to what glandium said in another post: increase in theft by elders.
I was talking more about the philosophical side of things, what with laws often being cultural norms in writing. So when you have multiple different norms things can get ugly and misunderstandings happen. In some countries they are looking into introducing multiple different laws to alleviate this.
Obviously a big part of crime comes out of desperation (hunger) which might be going down as you say.
As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do
There was just one fatal shooting in the whole of 2015
May 18th 2017 | TOKYO
THE stake-out lasted a week, but it paid off in the end. The tireless police of Kagoshima, a sleepy city in the far south of the country, watched the unlocked car day and night. It was parked outside a supermarket, and contained a case of malt beer. Finally, a passing middle-aged man decided to help himself. Five policemen instantly pounced, nabbing one of the city’s few remaining law-breakers.
Japan’s cluttered streets are not always pretty but they are remarkably safe. Crime rates have been falling for 13 years. The murder rate of 0.3 per 100,000 people is among the lowest in the world; in America it is almost 4 (see chart). A single gun slaying was recorded for the whole of 2015. Even yakuza gangsters, once a potent criminal force, have been weakened by tougher laws and old age.
Yet, far from being pensioned off, the police are growing in numbers: beat cops, known colloquially as omawari-san (Mr Walk-around), are a fixture in most neighbourhoods. Japan has over 259,000 uniformed officers—15,000 more than a decade ago, when crime rates were far higher. The ratio of officers to population is very high, especially in Tokyo, home to the world’s biggest metropolitan police force—a quarter bigger than the one protecting New York.
This means plenty of attention for crimes that would be considered too petty to investigate elsewhere, such as the theft of a bicycle or the possession of a tiny amount of drugs. One woman describes how five officers crowded into her cramped apartment after she reported her knickers being swiped from a clothesline. A small army of detectives was assigned last year to apprehend a group of 22 people who had been growing marijuana for their personal use only and smoking it in deserted rural spots.
In fact, as the police run out of things to do, they are becoming more inventive about what constitutes a crime, says Kanako Takayama of Kyoto University. In one recent case, she says, they arrested a group of people who had shared the cost of renting a car, deeming the arrangement an illegal taxi. Some prefectures have begun prosecuting people who ride their bicycles through red lights.
In 2015 a man was arrested for scribbling Adolf Hitler moustaches onto posters of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister. Ms Takayama says detectives have started appearing without permission on university campuses, to monitor “troublesome” students. One reason why police are going after cyclists may be to make up for the steady fall in driving offences. (Both drivers and cyclists can avoid fines by signing up for remedial training at certified driving schools, which are often staffed by retired officers, notes Colin Jones of Doshisha University.) Fifteen years ago police in Hokkaido, in Japan’s sparsely populated north, conspired with yakuza gangsters to smuggle guns into the country so they could meet quotas for finding them.
The hunt for things to do may sometimes be beneficial. The number of reported cases of children being abused at home has almost doubled since 2010, despite the declining birth rate. That suggests the police are increasingly intervening in the domestic sphere, which they used to avoid.
Even critics of Japan’s justice system accept that it gets a lot right. Rates of recidivism are low and a great deal of effort is made to keep young offenders out of the prison system; police work with parents to keep young people on the straight and narrow. Adults are incarcerated at a far lower rate than in most rich countries: 45 per 100,000, compared with 146 in Britain and 666 in the United States.
Yet the police are oddly inefficient. Even though there are so many officers and so few crimes, they solve less than 30% of them. Confessions, often made under duress, form the basis of most criminal prosecutions. The courts dismissed the case of the beer thief in Kagoshima, despite all the work that went into it. Japan is almost crime-free not thanks to the police, says Yoshihiro Yasuda, a campaigning lawyer, but because people police themselves.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Petty officers"
I think the degree of integration in the Japanese society is higher, so people who deviate are quickly pulled back into the fold. It makes for empty prisons and low crime rate, but peer pressure can be very stressful - that's why there are high suicide rates and hikikomori.
The key to having such a degree of integration is to spread the good equally between social groups - there should not be first and second class. Everyone must be in the same class. Otherwise, the discriminated class will resent it and think of themselves as not part of the same society, so, why respect its rules? Example: black neighborhoods in NY.
The Japanese way of reducing crime - by reducing class difference and keeping everyone well connected in the social web. But I perceive the risk of reduced diversity, lack of creativity and innovation in that kind of system. Integration must be balanced by differentiation and vice-versa, if it is to work well.
You can visit and only see the appearance without understanding. Even if you live there, if you're insulated by your lifestyle, community, or location, you might assume things are pretty much the same everywhere.
Caste-based discrimination was an important civil rights issue for most of the 20th century, and still has long standing effects on the organization and opportunities for people in Japanese society.
And of course there’s also Zainichi Koreans, long standing Chinese communities in places like Kanagawa, the urban rural divide, and countless more divisions that counter you’re simplistic description of Japan as a uniform society.
The segregation happens on more than just class lines. People segregate based on culture and values.
Despite there being many poor, segregated communities in the USA, crime is perpetrated by and happens in only a few select communities. In fact, many poor communities thrive because of segregation. In an integrated society, members of the poor communities would be marginalized due to language and cultural barriers because there would not be a support network of people from similar cultural backgrounds. (although the communities where crime is commonplace would benefit from integration by spreading the crime around to different communities instead of keeping it within the community)
Japanese culture and values across all groups are much more homogenous and conducive to a civilized society. People look down upon crimes and value hard work and education.
On the other hand, there are communities in the USA who have values that are not conducive to civilized society and that glorify crime and hedonism and look down on the educated. Coincidentally, these communities also disproportionately contain the perpetrators of crimes.
On the surface level, it appears that the value system of the disruptive groups are the problem because many segregated, poor groups can live in civilized peace. Segregation itself is not a problem.
Everything points to the malfunctioning culture and value system of specific groups in the USA. Integration may help in so much as it dilutes the toxicity of the culture and value system of these groups.
I often hear stories like this but in roughly 6 months I've spent in Japan the only interaction I've had with police is when I initiate the interaction to ask directions, and they are always super friendly and helpful. (I'm a middle aged white guy)
I was going say, in the two weeks we were in Japan we were randomly stopped to have our passports checked sooo many times. Particularly in Kyoto. The plain clothes cops made me a little uncomfortable.
To be fair though in the middle of my trip the Akihabara massacre happened and visible police presence went way up after that.
My friend and I spoke the least of anyone in the group, and were actually in Akihabara at the time with no idea at all what was going on. We were there to return a camera, and we noted the place was CRAWLING with news crews. Didn’t figure it out until we got back to our friends who had been watching the news, terrified something had happened.
We were randomly passport checked before that happened however.
That's weird, I've heard that Tokyo cops do that but I've never been stopped once in eight years of living in Saitama (the prefecture just north of Tokyo). It's certainly not because I blend in, I'm cacausian and 188cm tall.
Do you think it was the bike, or your appearance? I'm a tall white guy living near a police station in Tokyo for over 2 years and I've never once been stopped by the police, but I also don't own a bike.
You post is tongue-in-cheek but it brings up an interesting question: Is an experienced foreign policeman a better candidate than an untrained lifelong citizen who is just starting a career? I would guess no, since laws and "the way of doing things" are so different that it would be better for trainee police to start with a clean slate.
It's almost certainly a good idea to have a few such people in a reasonably sized group because they will be able to challenge the 'we do it this way because we have always done it this way' mentality that eventually takes over most long lasting groups of any kind.
The Yakuza isn't counted, most of what they do is corruption, blackmail and unofficial / off the books crime. There are a bunch of gangs actively working to take their place as well, none of it is being officially counted:
"The Upstart Gangs Filling the Yakuza Power Vacuum"
... who keep a lid on the street crime. Your calculations shift when you believe mugging someone might get you thrown off a tall building even if the police don't catch you.
Briton here. Pretty sure I’ve seen statistics indicating that crime is on the increase in the UK.
I don’t have these statistics to hand, but I remember less than 6 months ago I would see a victim of a physical crime (stabbing, beating) on a daily basis when I used to commute to Manchester from Leeds.
It certainly isn’t comparable to Japan, in my opinion. Whether the police in UK bother to address such crime is another matter.
There's police recorded crime, and that has increased significantly (especially for violent crime).
There's the ONS crime survey data. This shows most crime is decreasing, although there are some real but small increases in violent crime.
It seems a lot of the increase in police recorded crime is because of better recording (especially around crimes of sexual violence like rape or things the police weren't doing so well at like stalking). But there have been some intensive programmes around targeting knife crime and street violence, and that's pushed the numbers up.
No, that's not true. Glos Police for example on their Twitter call for people to report "non-crimes" but their burglary clean-up rate is something like 9%. It's more accurate to say that UK police have given up on "traditional" crime.
Burglary clean up rates were never high because the only ways to detect a burglar are to catch them in the act, forensics, and catching them with stolen property.
Once the burglar has left the property they might, if they are sufficiently careless and unlucky, have left a usable fingerprint behind. However if you wander around a house without gloves randomly opening drawers and cupboards the odds of a good print are still only about 10%.
DNA might be better, but only if you spend a lot of money getting DNA profiles of everyone who has been in the house and comparing them to lots of profiles from random hairs and bits of skin. A minor domestic burglary doesn't warrant that expenditure.
So that leaves possession of the stolen goods. However this is not easy to prove, and burglars can make it harder by stashing the goods somewhere for a while in a way that makes it harder to tie the burglar to the goods, or in simple cases claiming to have bought it second hand in good faith. Even when the police manage to demonstrate that the property is stolen they may not be able to tie the property to a specific burglary, or prove that the person in possession was the actual burglar, leaving the original burglary unsolved.
Burglaries are often done by crews that roam through an area and then move on. When they get caught, it's often by piecing together information reported by victims and neighbours etc. It's then a cat and mouse game of reaching them before they move on, and it requires concentrated effort from the police. Often at the end you can get them on all 3 categories.
They have been cuting the uk police budget year on year for ages
Police numbers are now back where they were in the early 00's. Yes there have been cuts, but only from a historic high in 2009. But if crime really is reducing, then we need fewer police anyway, and if it's not, the police should be focussing what resources they do have on serious crimes. Not "things people say on Twitter" (or "cybercrime" as they call it)
Half the "police" I see are PCSOs or "Traffic Officers" (who appear to be impersonating police AFAICT) are they included in figures?
In our UK city we don't have traffic wardens (who were part of the police authority I gather), instead there are private parking attendants and PCSOs do an occasional blitz.
Police used to be regularly on patrol in the town centre, but there's only volunteers and private security now; maybe that's atypical.
The absolute numbers of police is not the issue, it's how they are allocated or how they choose to spend their time. Policing random people being mean to celebrities on Twitter seems to be a lot easier than walking the best...
Please could you link to any reports of these arrests? Because any time in the past people have made similar claims, and I've looked deeper, I've only ever found people on social media making threats of violence, or inciting other people to violence, or creating a campaign of harassment.
The Robin Hood Airport case is a well known example, albeit a few years old now.
There was also a case of a kid who posted on Facebook (to friends only) that British soldiers should go to hell for fighting in Iraq, the police arrested him and he was convicted for hate speech iirc.
> There was also a case of a kid who posted on Facebook (to friends only)
I was confused about the "to friend only" part, and it turns out he wasn't posting to friends only. He was posting to the general public, in threads that were tributes to soldiers that had died.
Note that his offence is normally so severe a custodial sentence of six weeks is the usual sentence, and he got much less than that.
Neil Phillips, a 44-year-old shopkeeper in Staffordshire, was arrested, fingerprinted, and had his computer seized by police when he made a pair of tasteless jokes about Nelson Mandela (“My PC takes so long to shut down I’ve decided to call it Nelson Mandela”).
> However, what really differentiated these two titles was their aggressive editorialising around threat themes, and in particular how they presented refugee and migrants as a burden on Britain’s welfare state. Both papers also featured humanitarian themes at a much lower level than any other newspapers in our study. Overall this meant that the Sun and the Daily Mail exhibited both a hostility, and a lack of empathy with refugees and migrants that was unique.
There's a reason the Daily Mail is no longer seen as a reliable source for Wikipedia: it often misrepresents cases like this.
> Mr Phillips, 44, is one of two men interviewed by police following a bitter, ill-tempered feud over plans for a mining memorial in the town centre – a well-intentioned project that, claims one leading councillor and barrister, has been ambushed by some members of the Far Right and used as a propaganda platform.
[...]
> And he sent the Sunday Mercury screen grabs – one a shocking image of decapitation, another featuring a wheelchair-bound individual, posted by Mr Phillips.
> He said: “They are vile and deeply offensive, anti-Muslim, anti-disabled.”
That's not even close to "made 2 nelson mandela jokes", is it?
Because it's bullshit from people who consider being called out on their hurtful behavior as being imprisonned. They want to be free to hurt people, but they don't want us to have freedom to confront them about this.
Words are words. They can’t hurt unless you let them. If you don’t want to hear them get off twitter. Prison isn’t a reasonable response. Sad that George Orwell being proven right in the UK of all places.
Hitlers crimes were his actions, not his words. That the world erred in not taking his words seriously and preparing to stop the actions he said he’d do, doesn’t mean the solution to future hitlers is s thought police.
Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate.
