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I think there are two things here: first is that Japan is so safe that police is actively looking for cases to pursue. I remember reading of police putting (as
by ptero 8y ago
I think there are two things here: first is that Japan is so safe that police is actively looking for cases to pursue. I remember reading of police putting (as a trap) a case of beer in an open car at a shopping plaza, monitoring it for a week before finally nabbing a retiree who opened a door (whether to "steal" the beer or just to investigate). In and of itself such safely is, IMO, something to celebrate.
The second is that the justice system is structured so that the state is always right and the criminal system famously has a conviction rate that exceeds 99%. Couple this with the vaguely defined laws (as cited in the article) and the desire by police to find some criminals, somewhere, and the results can be ugly. Dangerous to the bystanders at best, enabling local dictatorial powers at worst. My 2c.
- toxicFork 8y agoI don't think we can assume that "Japan is so safe that..." from these cases.
- shhehebehdh 8y agoWe don’t have to assume that Japan is safe. We have statistics for that.
- jbm 8y agoUnless you are a woman. I was sadly not surprised when I heard from a friend that she had been groped as a preteen in a department store. Worse yet, none of the rest of us were surprised to hear it. It’s normal and unreported. Likewise, there are some claims I’ve read that the suicide rate is high because of murders treated as suicide by police (who have their own quotas) and age inflation due to relatives who don’t report the death of relatives in order to collect pension funds. TLDR: Statistics are based on reported crime. It’s safe but not as safe as statistics show.
- shhehebehdh 8y agoSadly, those kinds of misreportings are common in other countries and places too. My own home of New York City has been hit by a number of underreporting scandals. I have no reason to believe they are less common elsewhere than Japan. So I still think national crime statistics provide the best basis for comparison.
- lozenge 8y agoIs the punishment for groping on trains still apologising to the victim on a train platform?
- soraminazuki 8y agoI don't know where you've got that idea, but I'm pretty sure gropers go to jail.
- PavlovsCat 8y agoFrom an article mentioned by another poster: > As for sexual assault, groping and molestation on crowded trains and elsewhere is so widespread (and so unlikely to be reported to the police) that NGOs such as the Osaka-based Chikan Deterrence Activity Centre suggest that almost every young woman experiences it at some point. https://www.tokyoreview.net/2017/08/myth-japans-bored-police/ https://www.tokyoreview.net/2017/08/myth-japans-bored-police...
- titanix2 8y agoThat. If you speak with Japanese women (in Japanese) they don’t feel safe at all and they have reason for that. There is a lot of perverts here. One day my girlfriend called because someone opened the door of her appartement. Another friend had a guy pretend to be the gas guy to enter their appartement just to retract when he saw the size of his shoes in the corridor. A female friend (foreigner, well endowed)... groped at the Shibuya crossing, etc. Even male friend have bad stories about guy trying to taxi them somewhere.
- soraminazuki 8y ago> It’s normal and unreported. There is no question that victims of sexual crimes needs to be heard out more. However, your statement is an exaggeration to say the least. Groping is a frequent and well-documented topic on Japanese news. But as is often the case with sensational topics like crime, it is not as commonplace as you make it sound like. I also doubt that the people around you were "unsurprised" to hear such things happening to your friend. It's just easy to imagine Japanese people displaying seeming indifference because of the sensitivity of the topic. At times, Japanese people can be reluctant to clearly express their opinions.
- TorKlingberg 8y agoThe questionable claim is that the arrests in this article happened because Japan is so safe.
- aburd 8y agoNo, police looking for a crime when there is none is not something to celebrate. Your second point is spot on, though.
- andreareina 8y agoI think they were saying that it's a cause to celebrate that police in Japan are bored, not the things they do to fill that boredom.
- ptero 8y agoYes, that was the point I was trying to make. I could have expressed it clearer.
- GuiA 8y agoThey are bored because they routinely ignore cases of domestic abuse, sexual assault and harassment, murder, they have corrupt agreements with the yakuza, and on and on it goes. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autopsy9-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autop... https://www.tokyoreview.net/2017/08/myth-japans-bored-police/ https://www.tokyoreview.net/2017/08/myth-japans-bored-police...
- coldtea 8y agoWell, many people would take the first case (no crime, and the police trying to find the smallest bs as crime to pass their time), over a country with lots of crime. (Sure, there's also the perfect case, no crime, and the police sitting idly, but in the real world we rarely have the "perfect" case, and "no crime/police fishing for people stealing a beer case left as a thief trap" is close enough to perfect).
- camgunz 8y agoInjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and this is a clear example of injustice. It's a slippery slope to effectively say, "we sometimes punish the wrong people, but in return we get a very safe society", because how can you feel safe in a society that may, at any time, randomly select you for punishment? It might not be "crime" per se, but when you're locked up, does it really matter if it's all by the book? Doesn't that mean the book is bad?
- euske 8y agoAnother thing is the lack of understanding, or almost disdain of technicality when it comes to IT among politicians and high ranked officials. The tendency is probably common among politicians everywhere, but Japan is particularly bad as the majority of these committees members have only legal backgrounds and don't even know what HTML is (and their contempt of studying them).
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- titanix2 8y agoGive me exemple of foreign politician that know HTML please (besides Taiwan ones). We got got a lot of funding for IT related stuff here from the government.
- solarengineer 8y agoThe Singapore PM is a Haskell programmer.
- 77pt77 8y agoI don't know about Haskell, but he did program a C++ Sudoku solver https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9419035
- arh68 8y agoOff the top of my head, Ted Lieu has a CS degree, so it’s likely. There are 4 congressmen total who have CS degrees [1]. Not to say a music major can’t know this stuff, too. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lieu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Lieu [1] https://hurd.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/we-asked-every-member-congress-computer-science-degree-about-apple-s-war https://hurd.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/we-asked-eve...
- b_tterc_p 8y agoThe 99% figure is a common misconception. Prosecutors in Japan are underfunded, so they only try to convict rock solid cases, among other factors. This Wikipedia entry seems to flagrantly defy wiki rules but seems more informative for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Japan#Conviction_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_J...
- gcb0 8y agoisn't prosecuting a prank orthogonal to your argument of only prosecuting rock solid cases?
- escherplex 8y agoHowever, the above link does point out a convention ripe for abuse: Because suspects are put through continuous interrogation which could last up to 23 days as well as isolation from the outside world, including access to lawyers, both the Japanese judiciary and the public are well aware that confession of guilt can easily be forced.
- dmix 8y agoThe Nissan CEO wasn't allowed to see or contact his family/friends for 3 months while he was in jail. Which he spent entirely in solitary. People without good lawyers and a strong grasp of the law would be far more liable to just give in.
- Defenestresque 8y ago
- hiccuphippo 8y agoWhat about the Yakuza?
- nihonde 8y agoYakuza are tolerated by police unless they cross certain lines. They perform an unpleasant but important function of keeping foreign gangs out.
- java-man 8y agoI am curious: they never cooperated with foreign organized crime? I find it hard to believe.
- nihonde 8y agoWell they are reputed to be involved in drug trafficking with other groups outside Japan, but they maintain control over foreign gang activity inside Japan. Edit: just to clarify, Yakuza is not a single group. There are big differences between the various units. Many of them don’t touch drug trade, some are involved in human trafficking, and others seem to be mainly symbolic.
- java-man 8y agoso, in effect, Yakuza is not that different from other businesses.
- freeflight 8y agoCalling them a business describes it spot on. Afaik they are pretty much to most "corporate" like crime syndicate out there. Complete with charity drives for good PR [0] [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yakuza/yakuza-among-first-with-relief-supplies-in-japan-idUSTRE72O6TF20110325 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yakuza/yakuza-among-first...
- 8y ago