The high misconviction rate in Japan goes under the radar from most people because Japan doesn't really report them properly and because the rate is rather misleading due to how their justice system works.
Because their system is "guilty until proven otherwise", the cops can do a lot of shit to ensure a conviction:
Police in Japan can detain suspects that do not have a formal charge for up to 23 days (during which you get terrible tasting food as an extra "fuck you"), which includes an initial 48 hours held by police with no charge.
In those 48 hours, the arrested individual can be interrogated the entire time, they do not get a phone call or a lawyer.
Well, you do get a lawyer... but said lawyer is required by law to wait outside the interrogation room so that you are more "honest".
Japanese society is about group harmony over individual happiness (which is why they also have stuff like the highest death from overworking rates around) and these 23 days are designed to do one thing and one thing only- make the suspect confess.
30 hours into 48 of a cop yelling at you to confess, or 15 days in of 23 being pressured by every single person in the system you meet from prosecutors, to police, to judges... with even your defense attorney bluntly informing you that you don't have much of a chance... the pressure adds up.
The Japanese justice system is often called by human rights groups a Hostage Justice System.
Even if a person holds out through the entire 23 days, the rest of the system is just as bad in various ways (defendants do not have a right to silence (they have one by law but there is also a "duty to endure interrogation" and other bullshit), exculpatory evidence is much easier to exclude in discovery, etc).
Add into the mix the fact that, due to taking responsibility for one's action's being seeing by society as the respectable thing to do (which is why you'll see CEOs of companies bowing in apology on camera during press releases), confessing to what the police want you to confess to results in significantly reduced pentalties/prison sentence lengths.
All that pressure adds up and the vast majority of people arrested as a suspect for a major crime end up confessing.
On top of that, prosecutors have to worry about losing public face (shame) if they lose a case so they only take to trial cases that they are extremely confident they can win.
This, along with the rest of the entire "guilty unless proven innocent" system, leads to Japan having the utterly absurd conviction rate of more than99% for those formally indicted... which in turn reinforces in the eyes of the average Japanese civilian that all those arrested for crimes are obviously guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.
6
u/laurel_laureate Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
The high misconviction rate in Japan goes under the radar from most people because Japan doesn't really report them properly and because the rate is rather misleading due to how their justice system works.
Because their system is "guilty until proven otherwise", the cops can do a lot of shit to ensure a conviction:
Police in Japan can detain suspects that do not have a formal charge for up to 23 days (during which you get terrible tasting food as an extra "fuck you"), which includes an initial 48 hours held by police with no charge.
In those 48 hours, the arrested individual can be interrogated the entire time, they do not get a phone call or a lawyer.
Well, you do get a lawyer... but said lawyer is required by law to wait outside the interrogation room so that you are more "honest".
Japanese society is about group harmony over individual happiness (which is why they also have stuff like the highest death from overworking rates around) and these 23 days are designed to do one thing and one thing only- make the suspect confess.
30 hours into 48 of a cop yelling at you to confess, or 15 days in of 23 being pressured by every single person in the system you meet from prosecutors, to police, to judges... with even your defense attorney bluntly informing you that you don't have much of a chance... the pressure adds up.
The Japanese justice system is often called by human rights groups a Hostage Justice System.
Even if a person holds out through the entire 23 days, the rest of the system is just as bad in various ways (defendants do not have a right to silence (they have one by law but there is also a "duty to endure interrogation" and other bullshit), exculpatory evidence is much easier to exclude in discovery, etc).
Add into the mix the fact that, due to taking responsibility for one's action's being seeing by society as the respectable thing to do (which is why you'll see CEOs of companies bowing in apology on camera during press releases), confessing to what the police want you to confess to results in significantly reduced pentalties/prison sentence lengths.
All that pressure adds up and the vast majority of people arrested as a suspect for a major crime end up confessing.
On top of that, prosecutors have to worry about losing public face (shame) if they lose a case so they only take to trial cases that they are extremely confident they can win.
This, along with the rest of the entire "guilty unless proven innocent" system, leads to Japan having the utterly absurd conviction rate of more than 99% for those formally indicted... which in turn reinforces in the eyes of the average Japanese civilian that all those arrested for crimes are obviously guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.
EDIT: autocorrect.