I don't mind criminals being punished. This person wasn't convicted of anything, yet was still punished. This isn't criminal punishment, this is just injustice. It's also the norm, pretty much everywhere.
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.
And what do you have to say to teenage girls or even little kid girls getting raped?
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.
Funny you say that because if you go to shinjuku right now there will be a bunch of scouts harassing high school girls to get into prostitution to the point of even running after them, and the police doesn’t seem to care. This has been going for years.
Japan's judicial system has something like a 99% conviction rate. It's "safe" because they swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people in the process. So everyone is naturally going to be on their best behavior.
The claim that Japan is "safe" because it has a high conviction rate is a junk meme. The United States federal conviction rate is essentially identical to the Japanese judicial conviction rate when measured by the same methodology. It's roughly 99.6-99.8% depending on the year.
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
That's absolutely wrong. In the US it's closer to 93%. If you can't tell the difference between "sometimes we get the wrong guy, then let him go" and "we literally never make a mistake", I don't think this conversation can continue in good faith.
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.
It’s not worth addressing all the inane stuff you made up here, but it is pretty funny that you essentially dance around the one problem I’ve mentioned, explain that Japan actually just incarcerates innocent people at twice the rate of the US only to let them go, and then complain I don’t understand the “legal system” (I’ve only mentioned one highly specific part so far). This is the worst astroturfing I’ve ever seen.
Edit: also very funny that you’re comparing it to the USA - one of the worst developed nations’ criminal justice systems. Shit I’d almost rather get arrested in Russia. Could you compare it to a nation that isn’t the constant butt of jokes in the specific topic we’re discussing?
Both of these jurisdictions have low prosecution and high conviction rates, because the conviction rate is an artifact of prosecutors only going to trial if they now they'll win. In the US this is heavily confounded by plea bargains, since prosecutors can get punishments without even having to go to trial.
It comes from a cursory understanding of the world outside of western countries. People watch a few videos on youtube about other countries, or visit on vacation for a week, and assume they understand the mentality of people who live there. It's hubris. Then they apply western moralities to other cultures, implicitly assuming their own western ideals are superior.
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.
How is this the third comment lying to defend Japan? This is the weirdest astroturfing I've ever seen. This isn't even something people argue over - there's a whole wiki article on how shitty the Japanese legal system is. Weebs are awful, I swear.
A single valid complaint about a nation isn't inherently some kind of propaganda. The only type of account that would imply this in this scenario (other than an extremely ignorant one) is a Japanese sock puppet account, ironically.
Nope, it's an invalid complaint. You stated "they [Japan] swipe up every single criminal they can, plus a bunch of random people" which is utter bullshit and a total fabrication.
If you didn't invent lies, then your comments would be received differently.
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.