How is it possible that Japan has a 99% conviction rate?
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don’t go to trial if you’re not going to win.
the US federal government also has a 99+% conviction rate
I’m pretty sure it means they don’t bother bringing a case to trial unless they’re sure of a conviction. If the case isn’t cut and dry, they do a plea deal or something.
A couple of things.
While the _conviction_ rate is very high, the _indictment_ rate is somewhat low. Japanese prosecutors generally only pursue cases that they are certain they can win, and when you do that your stats are going to be artificially high. It is like if an NFL team only played exhibition games against low-division colleges – they’d have a near 100% win rate, but that wouldn’t be all that impressive once you know the details.
Beyond that, the Japanese criminal justice system is routinely criticized for its harsh treatment of people pending trial. Being denied bail is common, as is harsh treatment in order to obtain confessions and the inability to see friends or family. It is nicknamed _hitojichi-shiho_, or “hostage justice system”, by many. This results in many innocent people confessing to crimes simply to get out of the harsh treatment pre-trial.
Japan also doesn’t have as robust a discovery process as the US does. Prosecutors only disclose the evidence they plan to present in court – which will _obviously_ point to the defendant’s guilt – and are not obligated to disclose to the defense any evidence they have that might indicate innocence. This makes it much harder for the defense to present a case that the defendant is not guilty.
Prosecutors won’t follow a case unless they are sure they can win. This is basically the reason.
But, winning a case does not always mean the convictions are correct so it does not mean guaranteed justice. The system is bad in this sense since they don’t have research on how often wrongful convictions occur.
The reason that prosecutors don’t pursue cases unless they are sure they can win could be the shame culture in Japan which makes them very sensitive toto the expectations and criticisms of others. So having bad conviction numbers could be interpreted as failure.
Simply, Japanese prosecutors only take cases to trial when they’re certain they can win. If there’s any amount of risk or ambiguity, they’ll defer prosecution (60% of cases), or attempt to secure a plea agreement or summary judgment (30% of cases). For every 100 persons charged with a crime, only 10 will go to a full trial.
It’s easy to keep a high win-rate when you stack the deck in your favor. The downside is that many persons charged with crimes end up “getting away with it” because the case is risky enough to put the prosecutor’s conviction rate in danger.
1. They don’t pursue crimes unless they are VERY sure they have proof.
2. They can detain you for VERY long periods of time to where it becomes in your best interests to just admit guilt. They do not have the same civil protections Americans do. So that means that 99% conviction rate is FULL of false confessions of people who had to chose between the lesser of two evils.
One aspect of this I don’t see others mentioning is that Japan is a civil law country, modeled after the French legal system. The differences between civil law and common law as practiced in countries like the United States are mostly subtle, but the biggest difference is that civil law countries do not have jury trials, instead it’s panels of judges who decide the merits of a case. Japan’s culture of respect means that judges are unlikely to disrespect the work of a prosecutor by handing down a not guilty verdict, and there are even a handful of cases of Japanese judges knowingly sentencing innocent people to death to avoid offending the prosecutor.
Easy, their courts are just a rubberstamp formality. The criminal is judged guilty before they ever step into a courtroom, the court is just a public spectacle to show how a righteous state is once again victorious over the despicable villain. The actual judgement is made by investigators and prosecutors by themselves in secret, there is no public due process, just an appearance of one.
At the end of the day, Japan is a democracy, but not a western democracy. The culture is significantly different and their justice system is one of the most startling examples of just how different they are. Normally you see such blatant cangaroo courts only in the shittiest of dictatorships.
And its not like their justice system isn’t effective, it very much is when it comes to making country safe and controlling crime, but its not very just or fair. Nobody can even guess how many they wrongly convict just because the system can’t stand to admit mistakes.
Jake Adelstein talks about this in Tokyo Vice, basically things aren’t officially registered as a crime unless the police and prosecutors believe they can secure a conviction. Until then it’s still a crime, but the police haven’t officially classified it that way.
It’s like how the US has won every war they’re involved in, but lost a significant number of “conflicts.”
There are also very few jury trials. I lived there in the early 2000’s and they had just started some of these with some civil cases and people were convinced it was a terrible idea. They usually have a three judge panel deciding convictions and I was told by some of the koban officers I got to know that after an arrest unless they know they can convict they just drop the charges that aren’t fines.
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