The way I've heard it, they don't bother arresting people who are not almost definitely guilty. After all, if someone is proven innocent, that's a black mark on the judge, the prosecution and the entire police department.
I don't know why the downvotes, this is the correct perspective. You need to take the base rate of criminality into account, and comparing Japanese in Japan to Japanese in America isn't unreasonable.
You could also look at the rate of crimes per capita in each country. For instance, murders per capita: 4.96 in the U.S. vs 0.26 in Japan [0]. If we take this to represent base-rate criminality in that population, then we have a 19:1 US:Japan murder ratio, with only a 16:1 US: Japan incarceration ratio. Japan incarcerates more per unit murder.
Of course this is a toy model, it's all a big feedback loop, etc., but I hope it serves to illustrate the point.
I'm making the point that the base rate of criminality needs to be taken into account if you want to compare incarceration rates. For many different reasons people in one society might commit more crime than people in another society.
Though I do not use the example myself, preferring the murder rate example, the parent's suggestion is a reasonable way to control for this inter-society difference. I would bet that Japanese in the U.S. evince rates of criminality more similar to those of Japanese in Japan than to the rest of American society. It's an empirical question; whether merely asking the question is racist or not given your particular sentiments about what's racist is beside the point.
I've realized we're probably confused about whether we're talking about Japanese in America vs. Japanese-Americans. I was talking about Japanese in America (the article is about a foreigner in Japan), but I'd make roughly the same claims in either case. Empirically, I would bet that both Japanese in America and Japanese-Americans both show rates of criminality more similar to Japan's than to the remainder of the U.S. population's. In the case of Japanese-Americans, I'd bet it's higher than Japan's. I haven't looked any numbers up or attempted to figure it out in detail.
As for why, there are a few reasons. One interesting one is selection effects (immigrants to a new country are not a random sample of the old country's population). There is culture, of course, probably the biggest factor, as well as other inheritances (material goods / wealth, genes, disease burden...).
No, it is the question that is racist. The assumption that because of your ethnicity, you would have some kind of specific level of criminality. That is extremely racist.
You're assuming a causal relationship when the claim is correlational. The claim is not that because of a person's ethnicity that person will commit crimes at a certain rate, the claim is that you can make a good guess about criminality based on ethnicity. That is to say, there is a correlation. Which is unambiguously true--just look up the numbers. Only takes a moment.
In either case, whether it's racist or not is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Japanese Americans are a group that has a sizable population of people who have lived their entire lives in the US. If you think that they would be more likely to behave similarly to people who have spent their whole lives in Japan, the burden of proof is on you, because that certainly is not a mainstream view.
1) Confusion between Japanese in America and Japanese-Americans
2) "More likely to behave similarly" is a considerably wider net than just crime rates
3) I think the mainstream view is that East Asians of all stripes commit considerably less crime than average. It's certainly true of violent crime, which is something I've looked in to.
The implication of pointing out the US' high incarceration rate is that the US justice system and society are particularly malevolent.
This point was used to defend Japan's justice system as being far more benign than the US.
However, Japan's justice system may in fact be far more unforgiving that the US' if Americans are, in general, more likely to commit crime. Which is perfectly fair point to make (although inconclusive for various reasons).
If (for whatever reason) Americans are more likely to commit more crimes, they are, all else being equal, more likely to be in jail.
Of course many things can be true at the same time. Japan can have a brutal justice system and have a very docile, law abiding population. Maybe the brutality caused them to be docile. Or, America can have an abusive justice system, and a population that needs to be more incarcerated than others.
Either way, the criminality of the Japanese is a relevant factor if America's incarceration rate is made relevant
Yeah, but the parent comment is talking about Japanese Americans, not Japanese in America. The experience of Japanese Americans is not related to Japanese people (especially if raised in Japan).