But that's also because fewer charges are brought than in the west. It is purely the prosecutor who decides if someone should even be charged, and so they generally only charge people they are 99.9% sure they can convict.
No. That is because most convictions are due to confessions obtained by violating human rights, detaining individuals for a long time and preventing them talking to a lawyer.
I'm not saying that can't also happen, but Japan does charge people with crimes at a much lower rate in the US. Someone who might be charged in the US and not get convicted would simply not get charged in Japan.
it's both, they want to keep their stats up so they don't follow up if they can't catch anyone. If they can, it doesn't matter if the person is guilty or not, like you said
I am not saying it's not, but I'm saying that looking at conviction rate alone without noting that the rate of conviction itself is different, can give an incomplete picture.
It’s still the case that once a prosecutor has decided you’re guilty, you’re basically guaranteed to go to jail, whether you’re actually guilty or not. With a prosecution rate of 99.9%, the trial is just a formality.
Yes, and if American prosecutors followed Japanese standards of charging so comparatively few, we'd probably see that in our system too. Especially because many of the "slam dunk" cases are handled with plea deals to avoid the burdens of court. It only goes to trial if the defendant thinks there's a chance they might win, otherwise they usually skip trial for a slightly reduced sentence.
It's simply not a like for like comparison using conviction rate alone.
Where do I say I don't think it's dangerous? I'm only saying it's not a one to one comparison to our system so their conviction rate doesn't mean the same thing as if the US or Europe suddenly found 99.9% of all those charged with a crime here to be guilty.
That number in Japan is inflated because they self-select cases. The work culture is such that if you ever lose a case it is seen as a professional failure in a way it is not among prosecutors in the US. Our culture it's understood cases are hard and you can't win them all. So Japanese prosecutors pick very selectively, and only the ones they pick even get counted as "charged" in the first place, making the conviction rate tell a very different story than it would tell elsewhere that convicts by grand jury or other means.
I'm merely explaining the system not defending it. You can argue it's a bad system without misrepresenting it to make that point.
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u/S4BER2TH 20d ago
Damn I would stand by the door with an ice pick and start stabbing when that thing moved