Crime And Punishment

While many people know something about Japanese crime,that it's rates are low but very few know about it's punishment.The Japanese punishment is among the harshest and most inescapable in the entire planet.Their prisons are notoriously draconian and if you ever end up in the court system,there is near a one hundred percent chance they are going to be locked up,which means one of two things:

Either their penal system is perfect or they are locking up a lot of innocents.

Conviction rates are 99.98% in Japan. Those are higher numbers than china ,higher than Saudi Arabia.Even Stalinist Russia didn't put up with these numbers. To put it simply,if their legal system puts you before a judge you are going to be found guilty.

But if you read interviews with certain members of Japanese court,Chances are you will walk away thinking they haven't locked up a single innocent person in the entire careers.To quote them, 'we would see a thousand guilty go free than a single innocent man locked up'. According to them, they have been able to achieve these astronomically high numbers is because Japanese prosecutors don't move forward until they are absolutely certain that they can obtain a conviction and although there is propaganda at the core, there is some truth in that statement. In comparison on to Britain with 70th percentile of conviction needed, there is much higher burden of proof required before they go to the courts.

But conversely,this means that they are less likely to check their facts when they do. As the theory goes, if prosecution is only going to bring cases that they are sure of them being prosecution they are trying.In many ways, it's a rubber stamp from cop to cell. But even that can't quite explain the numbers.

To fill the gap,the answer must lie in culture.In Japan,like few places on earth, loyalty reigns supreme.The imperial system destroyed by American written constitution may no longer be law but it never truly left the society.today,its not hard to argue that loyalty is above all, to one's group ,often to one's job.For those in public sector, it's fairly direct. Confucian subservience to the state. Not in a robotic sense but a social one.

In such a set stage, the state being wrong is akin to sacrilege.if someone is convicted,it isn't just the legal system that presumes them as guilty.everyone does. Getting out, even with genuine innocence is virtually impossible.

What judge wants to stand up and call the state wrong, the persecutor wrong? Their own group wrong ?

In 2007,a judge came forward to express regret about sentencing a man to death in 1968.he knew he was innocent at the point but locked him up anyway.he said he was feeling pressurised,not external but an internal pressure. The two other judges said he was guilty and for him to disagree was shameful.So despite that fact he had written a 360 page document detailing innocence of the man, he gave the death penalty anyway.

And shortly,in true Japanese spirit, he quietly resigned. But what I find interesting is what he didn't dare to do, to call him innocent out loud because the system had said he was guilty.and even when you know it's wrong, you don't question the system.

As the death penalty in Japan is an odd tale in its own, the man he sentenced to death row was on it for 40years.Eventually,in an extremely rare turn of events in the island nation, the dedicated work of a single activist had him freed, his sister. The only one willingly to speak against the social pressure.

The judge who sentenced him wished to apologise for what he had knowingly inflicted. But 40 years of draconian Japanese prison life had left him disoriented to even make sense of the teary apology.Damage has been done. Justice has been served.

Yet even now,after being acquitted and found innocent, the state continues to try to find him guilty.they haven't given up on the man because the system cannot be wrong. You don't get 99.98% conviction by letting people walk away even when they are innocent.its a common story here.

Many people around the globe praise Japan and rightly so,for the successes that they had. Faith in society has led to a plethora of achievements.A nation of hard workers, sporting a strong economy and extremely low rates of social unrest.Homeless are organised and crime is low.

While we are quick to laud,we shouldn't overlook the negatives.they may be less evident to a casual viewer, but there are.

The government has virtually been one party since 2nd world war .Japan's suicide rates are highest and people's self reported rate of misery and stress rival those of any system.

Freedom on paper doesn't equate freedom in practice and it's in the statistics like their conviction rate.

I am sure that many readers will still hold onto the notion that the legal system is somehow directly related to the low crime rate in Japan. But there is simply no evidence to suggest the same, once we scratch the surface. If anything, this system produces the opposite.Most crimes brought to state never make it to court.those that do are often deferred perpetually to avoid a statement of innocence.

Crime rate in Japan are surely the lowest in the world, even being underreported as they are but that's not because their conviction rate is obscene. Duty to state,loyalty to one's group are an incredibly strong desire to save faces.

I am not saying my system is better or that any system is better. They are just choices on the spectrum but what am saying is that Japan is almost certainly and in a sense willingly locking up innocent to a degree that would shock any other nation, including dictatorship.And the craziest part to me is that they aren't doing it as a mistake.they are doing it because it's their job.

Their happens to be a thin line between conviction and accused,thinner than regular folks like you and me may comprehend ,but a crucial one.

When politicians pressurise Judiciary ,it's injustice .

When the people pressurise Judiciary,its justice?