You can have western values while also having Japanese peacefulness.
Hard disagree. Prison is the one you're not supposed to enjoy, jail is the place you use to keep people BEFORE they are judged.
A jail should limit the people held only as much as needed for the safety of the public and the handlers, but no punishment should be inflicted because no one's a convicted criminal (yet).
And in any case, prison should have a strong component of making the guilty person fit to live among others. A person that's been made to sit still staring at the wall for all their waking life for years is a person I definitely don't want as a neighbour, because there's no way they come out of that sane.
Jail's job is to keep you around during your legal process. You're not supposed to enjoy jail but it's not supposed to be torture, either. Torture does not belong in a civilized society and especially should not be used against those who have not even been formally charged. much less convicted, of a crime.
So even if the prosecution decides to drop your case, you're already fucked -- this is not how proper justice system should work.
Also remember that this article is about an experience before any charges were filed, before she'd seen a court room, before she even had the opportunity to prove her innocence or be convicted. "You are not supposed to be in jail" is a laughably naive way of looking at this type of situation.
Especially If you’re wrongfully arrested. “Optimizing society for law abiding people” means the opposite of what you think it means.
I agree, and this system is meant to hold people before they have evidence meaning it can hurt law abiding people.
In this case, the author evidently _was_ a law abiding person, so the optimization failed, senselessly, likely out of a systemic effort to strike enough fear in the populace to over-index towards avoiding the possibility of this sort of situation. (Much like Singapore caning people for minor offenses.)
Whether or not you agree that such draconian punishments or processes are effective or fair is a different discussion, but this person was LITERALLY not supposed to be in jail, so how fair is it that they were removed from polite society for over a month in such poor conditions and at considerable expense?
They change their mind oh so quickly after
As a Mexican friend puts it for Mexico: Dress as the police should believe you.
The more bland the colors, the more you blend in and easier it is to flow through places.
Like all "migrant workers", they're considered low class and are treated that way, similar to how Turkish people are treated in Germany.
I assume the OP is actually referring to these returned second generation Japanese.
I'd think a formal or business casual attire, with proper grooming, is a rather international signal that you're vaguely alright in your ways.
Anything specific you reckon otherwise for?
It's an obvious deficit in civilization itself that we can't have, or even seem to come up with, a principled justice system. We just intermittently ban specific atrocities and hope that eventually adds up to justice.
But too often the system makes criminals into worse humans. That’s unhelpful.
Being laxist towards criminals is not just being cruel to the victims to me: to me it is downright complicity with the criminals.
BTW: Japan happens to be one of the safest country on earth. A friend who's a pilot told me: "Tokyo is the only city in the world where I've women from my team (mostly air hostesses but also female pilot or co-pilot) go for a run at 3am". Now he didn't fly to every city in the world but I can name a great many cities where a fit woman won't go joking in yoga pants at 3am. And so can he.
Japan is safe because of other factors, not their conviction rate.
> they swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people
And this is completely baseless.
Edit: Japan literally has a higher conviction rate than authoritarian regimes. It's like trying to argue the US doesn't have a birthing problem because we "only" have 5.6 infant deaths per thousand.
Yeah, you have no understanding of the systems you are talking about, nor any understanding of the numbers you are copy-pasting. You are comparing apples to oranges. The United States federal conviction rate, when measured using the same metrics as the Japanese conviction rate, is ~99.6% [0]. Read the Pew Research article Fewer than 1% of federal criminal defendants were acquitted in 2022 to understand why [0].
The Japanese system is structured so that prosecutors do intense filtering before indictment. In Japan, prosecutors decide to indict in fewer than one-third of referred cases. Approximately 65-70% of cases are dropped before formal charges are filed. After charges are filed, post-charge dismissals are extremely rare (0.026%) and only occur in extraordinary cases. The post-charge dismissal rate is essentially zero.
By contrast, the United States federal system filters less aggressively before indictment. It allows 83% of referred cases through to indictment. It then filters again, and drops 8.2% of charged defendants after charges are filed, in post-charge dismissal.
The United States system has post-charge dismissals, and the Japanese system does not. These are fundamentally different systems, and cannot be compared directly. To make the systems comparable, US post-charge dismissals should be counted as pre-charge dismissals like they would be under the Japanese system. Then the metrics can be compared equivalently.
When measured on the same metric (acquittals as a share of all formally charged defendants), the gap between the two systems disappears. Japan's acquittal rate is approximately 0.1%. The US federal acquittal rate is 0.4%. Both are under 1%.
> "sometimes we get the wrong guy, then let him go" and "we literally never make a mistake"
This claim demonstrates no understanding of the Japanese legal system. Approximately two-thirds of cases in the Japanese legal system are dropped before charges are filed. This is what happened to the woman in the submitted article, there was not enough evidence to prosecute, so the charges were dropped. Japan's rate of dropping charges is far higher than in the United States legal system, where only 25% of cases are dropped pre-charges, and another 8% are dropped post-charges. The US system only drops one-in-three cases. Japan drops two-in-three cases. Comparing the two systems, Japan prosecutes half as many cases as does the United States, on a per-case basis.
The irony is, Japan literally falls under your invented category of "sometimes we get the wrong guy, then let him go". Japan lets people go at twice the rate of the US federal system. You're parroting claims without any understanding of the system behind it.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/06/14/fewer-tha...
For example, pretty much everything kulahan wrote about Japan in the grandparent comment is completely made up. Good narrative, emotionally aligned, feels true, stated with complete confidence, but absolutely fictitious.
1) You obviously don't understand the Japanese legal system.
2) You're very comfortable lying, and making up false claims about the Japanese legal system.
3) You don't address your lies when they are called out.
4) There are genuine issues with the Japanese legal system that you could critique, but you're unable to articulate these issues and instead resort to (2).
For example, you could critique Japan's 23 day arbitrary detention policy, but instead you focused on Japan's high conviction rate which is actually very comparable to that of other nations.
If you didn't invent lies, then your comments would be received differently.
There are many places women can run at 3am - Singapore, Bangkok, jut from top of my head.
And living in Tokyo, I woudn't advise any women to do jogging at 3am.
The vast majority of folks who get detained in Japan either did something particularly obvious (DUI, violence with a weapon, etc.), or they had been warned multiple times about illegal behavior.
Sometimes the crime they are busted for seems trivial (e.g., Al Capone and tax evasion in the US), but there are other more serious crimes that they have been involved with or expected to be involved with.
I have literally never heard of any innocent person being detained in Japan, but I’ve seen it happen multiple times in the US (esp. for peaceful protesters).
That said, I know of many cases in Japan for which very guilty people were given appropriate warnings rather than detention and prosecution, and behavior changed.
So say if someone shoves you on a subway in Tokyo, do not ever shove back or do anything worse. Move away, get witnesses / evidence if you can, then report. (I've also witnessed an attacker try to exploit this rule, where they would intentionally injure themselves during the conflict and then claim that the defendant did it, so be aware of that)
Oh, and other things that can get you arrested:
- Not promptly returning someone's lost property such as a wallet. There was a case here in the newspapers recently.
- A review about a business that damaged their reputation, even if it was true (but you don't have 100% evidence). eg. "I got food poisoning from here". Be very careful what you post and say online as defamation laws are very different.
oh, and maybe not arrested, but get in trouble for: if you place your household rubbish into not your designated collection point, even though the point is the closest to your home. (Also don't get me started on the topic of sorting trash...)
Is this actually true or just fearmongering? I mean really, no chance to explain? Sounds as dumb as being forced into a psychiatric ward for wearing a pink shirt.
Absolutely hilarious if you have any knowledge of Japan. Your umbrella is the one thing that is absolutely not safe if you leave it unattended. Japanese will joke about this.
This really calls the whole article into question.
It’s also amusing to me that anything Japan related winds up on the front page of HN, but a similar article for a different country would probably go un-voted.
Mostly fear mongering or law breaking that is commonly punished throughout the world.
In order:
- nonsense, unless heated argument includes assault or disturbing the peace
- stealing… yes, it’s a crime. Usually handled with an apology and repayment if charges are brought. Completely overlooked if it was an actual one-off accident.
- overstaying visa - also a crime. Self-reporting to an immigration office will usually lead to a light punishment of “return home and 1-year re-entry ban”. People who live in Japan on tourist visas and do short visa runs are scrutinized carefully.
- grabbing umbrella or bike - fear mongering. This happens all the time. If it comes to a head, just apologize. I will say that there is a bit of an art to umbrellas and bikes — either embrace the musical chairs, or take actions such that it is less likely to happen to you.