CrozierVision

So, that's why Tokyo's streets are so clean!

Last year I commented on Japan's astonishingly low crime rate. Some of the Times's reporting of the trial of a British citizen might go a long way to explaining why:

“His treatment has been barbaric, something out of the Dark Ages. He’s been held in solitary confinement for months and can be punished even for making eye contact with a guard or combing his hair at the wrong time of day...

Japan’s courts have an extraordinarily high conviction rate of 99 per cent. Prosecutors are usually armed with a full confession from the accused, often achieved after a period of solitary confinement and reduced rations.

And from another report in the same paper:

Prisoners are not told of most of the rules and learn them only when other inmates tell them or a guard punishes them. For much of the day, prisoners are banned from talking or looking at each other. Making eye contact with a guard usually results in instant punishment.

There are times when I wonder whether juries and fair trials are truly compatible with a low crime rate, and, if so, if forced to make a choice, which I would choose.

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But Britain had a low crime rate in the early 20th century. Didn't we have juries and fair trials then?

Andy.

Posted by Andy Wood on June 15, 2003

It's one of those situations where neither extreme is acceptable, and you muddle through to find some middle ground. Much of life is like this.

Posted by Michael Jennings on June 15, 2003

Andy,

There have been a few things I have heard - and no I can't remember where and from whom - which have made me think that perhaps criminal justice was a rather more rough and ready business then than it is now. A not dissimilar system allowed lynchings to go on all over the Southern States.

I understand that there was a property qualification for jury service up until 1972.

Posted by Patrick Crozier on June 15, 2003

I've often heard this statistic of the "extraordinarily high conviction rate of 99 per cent" for Japan, but it is never accompanied by the corresponding figure for Western Countries.

For Australia I know it is 95%, which makes the Japanese figure look much less extraordinary (though still high).

Modern Crime and Law fiction usually depicts the conviction rate as about 50%, so as to maintain some sort of narrative tension. But in reality, prosecutors do not bother with the expense and trouble of a trial unless they are very confident of a conviction.

Posted by Patrick on June 16, 2003