In Japan, the conviction rate is about 99%. (Many criminal defense attorneys go their entire career without ever having a client being found innocent.) This is widely attributed to the facts that Japan uses bench trials and that prosecutors are expected not to bring cases to trial unless they are certain to win.
It might also partly be due to Japan’s approach to confessions:
Confessions are often obtained after long periods of questioning by police. This can,
at times, take weeks or months during which time the suspect is in detention and
can be prevented from contacting a lawyer or family. Thus, since the suspect is
put through prolonged strain, stress and pressure, the reliability of such confessions
can be questioned. To Japanese citizens and police, however, the arrest itself already
creates the presumption of guilt which needs only to be verified via a confession.
From the Japanese conviction rate, we can conclude that the trials are meaningless. This is, I think, rather different from other civil law countries. But what this means is that the accuracy of the system is in the hands of the police and prosecutor, not the judge. Juries are obviously very different from judges, but police are not so obviously different (they are both professionals employed by the state).
So one should ask if the overall effect is different from other civil law countries and whether this is due to formal differences or informal ones. My impression is that the overall effect is a much higher closure rate, but I haven’t seen numbers.
From the Japanese conviction rate, we can conclude that the trials are meaningless. [...] But what this means is that the accuracy of the system is in the hands of the police and prosecutor, not the judge.
This is widely attributed to the fact...that prosecutors are expected not to bring cases to trial unless they are certain to win
If this were the real explanation though, then it would mean that the vast majority of criminals go free, since in the real world there is rarely “slam-dunk” evidence. Though one could certainly make a good case for this being morally justifiable (“better 1000 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man go to jail”), it seems to me highly implausible that this is actually what’s going on—the crime rate would be sky-high if criminals knew they would almost certainly never be punished. In reality, Japan’s crime rates are rather low.
So to my mind, a 99+% conviction rate is, in and of itself, proof of a highly flawed system, as there are really only two ways to explain it:
If this were the real explanation though, then it would mean that the vast majority of criminals go free, since in the real world there is rarely “slam-dunk” evidence.
I don’t know much about the specific example of Japan, but generally speaking, this comment isn’t necessarily correct. In a culturally homogeneous and tightly-knit society, in which strong traditional norms covering all aspects of life are taken with great seriousness and individuals normally don’t spend much time in isolation and anonymity, it can be very hard to commit a crime without leaving slam-dunk evidence. Moreover, in such societies, it may be that only a vanishingly small number of people would be capable of committing a crime and lying convincingly about it when questioned later by authority figures.
To what extent the contemporary Japan has these characteristics, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that it has them in a greater measure than, say, the U.S. I also don’t know if there could perhaps be some other aspects of their culture that have similar implications for the issues of crime.
Therefore, even if it’s true that Japanese courts are nearly always agreeing with prosecutors doesn’t by itself mean that the system is worse than the American one by either metric. We would need more concrete data to make such judgments.
In a culturally homogeneous and tightly-knit society, in which strong traditional norms covering all aspects of life are taken with great seriousness and individuals normally don’t spend much time in isolation and anonymity
I’m absolutely not an expert (I’ve never even been to Japan), but this really doesn’t sound like modern Japan to me, at least based on what I’ve absorbed from pop culture.
To what extent the contemporary Japan has these characteristics, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that it has them in a greater measure than, say, the U.S.
More so than the US, sure—but the US is an anomaly when it comes to cultural heterogeneity. Lots of countries with western-style legal systems have a similar level of cultural homogeneity to Japan, but don’t see this same phenomenon.
From what I’ve read, the idea is that the prosecutors, who tend to work with the same judges over and over, know what level of evidence it takes to convince them to convict, so they can accurately predict the outcome of each trial before it happens and, if they think they might lose, simply don’t bring the case. (In other words, “certain to win” doesn’t imply “slam-dunk evidence”.)
The first question that comes to mind though is how do they come to know exactly what level of evidence a given judge requires to convict, if they virtually never see an example of the judge not convicting?
It could be that the whole system operates according to established rules, whether formal or informal, that are acknowledged by everyone involved. The prosecutors have to satisfy a certain well-defined bureaucratic procedure when preparing the case, and the judge merely rubber-stamps their papers if this job has been done correctly. Many things in all sorts of bureaucratic institutions work this way, and if the people involved are highly conscientious and not suffering from significant perverse incentives, the results may well be far from terrible.
From the Japanese conviction rate, we can conclude that the trials are meaningless. This is, I think, rather different from other civil law countries. But what this means is that the accuracy of the system is in the hands of the police and prosecutor, not the judge. Juries are obviously very different from judges, but police are not so obviously different (they are both professionals employed by the state).
So one should ask if the overall effect is different from other civil law countries and whether this is due to formal differences or informal ones. My impression is that the overall effect is a much higher closure rate, but I haven’t seen numbers.
In Japan, the conviction rate is about 99%. (Many criminal defense attorneys go their entire career without ever having a client being found innocent.) This is widely attributed to the facts that Japan uses bench trials and that prosecutors are expected not to bring cases to trial unless they are certain to win.
It might also partly be due to Japan’s approach to confessions:
From the Japanese conviction rate, we can conclude that the trials are meaningless. This is, I think, rather different from other civil law countries. But what this means is that the accuracy of the system is in the hands of the police and prosecutor, not the judge. Juries are obviously very different from judges, but police are not so obviously different (they are both professionals employed by the state).
So one should ask if the overall effect is different from other civil law countries and whether this is due to formal differences or informal ones. My impression is that the overall effect is a much higher closure rate, but I haven’t seen numbers.
Nope, I was wrong. Only half of Japanese murders are prosecuted. page 9
Douglas_Knight:
That observation mostly holds for the U.S. too.
If this were the real explanation though, then it would mean that the vast majority of criminals go free, since in the real world there is rarely “slam-dunk” evidence. Though one could certainly make a good case for this being morally justifiable (“better 1000 guilty men go free than 1 innocent man go to jail”), it seems to me highly implausible that this is actually what’s going on—the crime rate would be sky-high if criminals knew they would almost certainly never be punished. In reality, Japan’s crime rates are rather low.
So to my mind, a 99+% conviction rate is, in and of itself, proof of a highly flawed system, as there are really only two ways to explain it:
Most criminals go unprosecuted
Many innocent people get sent to jail
And the latter seems much more likely.
kodos96:
I don’t know much about the specific example of Japan, but generally speaking, this comment isn’t necessarily correct. In a culturally homogeneous and tightly-knit society, in which strong traditional norms covering all aspects of life are taken with great seriousness and individuals normally don’t spend much time in isolation and anonymity, it can be very hard to commit a crime without leaving slam-dunk evidence. Moreover, in such societies, it may be that only a vanishingly small number of people would be capable of committing a crime and lying convincingly about it when questioned later by authority figures.
To what extent the contemporary Japan has these characteristics, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that it has them in a greater measure than, say, the U.S. I also don’t know if there could perhaps be some other aspects of their culture that have similar implications for the issues of crime.
Therefore, even if it’s true that Japanese courts are nearly always agreeing with prosecutors doesn’t by itself mean that the system is worse than the American one by either metric. We would need more concrete data to make such judgments.
I’m absolutely not an expert (I’ve never even been to Japan), but this really doesn’t sound like modern Japan to me, at least based on what I’ve absorbed from pop culture.
More so than the US, sure—but the US is an anomaly when it comes to cultural heterogeneity. Lots of countries with western-style legal systems have a similar level of cultural homogeneity to Japan, but don’t see this same phenomenon.
From what I’ve read, the idea is that the prosecutors, who tend to work with the same judges over and over, know what level of evidence it takes to convince them to convict, so they can accurately predict the outcome of each trial before it happens and, if they think they might lose, simply don’t bring the case. (In other words, “certain to win” doesn’t imply “slam-dunk evidence”.)
Interesting.
The first question that comes to mind though is how do they come to know exactly what level of evidence a given judge requires to convict, if they virtually never see an example of the judge not convicting?
It could be that the whole system operates according to established rules, whether formal or informal, that are acknowledged by everyone involved. The prosecutors have to satisfy a certain well-defined bureaucratic procedure when preparing the case, and the judge merely rubber-stamps their papers if this job has been done correctly. Many things in all sorts of bureaucratic institutions work this way, and if the people involved are highly conscientious and not suffering from significant perverse incentives, the results may well be far from terrible.
Well, one way would be to ask the judge.
From the Japanese conviction rate, we can conclude that the trials are meaningless. This is, I think, rather different from other civil law countries. But what this means is that the accuracy of the system is in the hands of the police and prosecutor, not the judge. Juries are obviously very different from judges, but police are not so obviously different (they are both professionals employed by the state).
So one should ask if the overall effect is different from other civil law countries and whether this is due to formal differences or informal ones. My impression is that the overall effect is a much higher closure rate, but I haven’t seen numbers.