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HOW DOES JAPAN GET THAT LOW CRIME RATE, ANYWAY?
Today's \Los Angeles Times\ has an article that
illuminates the difficulty of citing Japan's low crime rate
as evidence that gun-control is a factor.
In a Column One story titled "Victims of a Safe
Society," the \Los Angeles Times\ details how the relatively
low rate of private criminality in Japan is achieved by
massive police criminality: beating suspects so severely
that they are permanently crippled in order to obtain
confessions, a massively high rate of false executions and
imprisonment, and virtually no penalties for police who
commit these crimes.
"Many foreign people think Japan is a highly
developed, advanced, democratic country, and it is," says
Hideyuki Kayanuma, an attorney for an American entertainer
who was permanently crippled by Japanese police who
suspected him of drug possession. "But especially in the
field of criminal justice, it's a Third World country.
There are no human rights."
Civil-rights attorney Kensuke Onuki says, "It's almost
like 'Midnight Express.'"
In addition to beating of suspects, sleep deprivation
to achieve confessions, and common torture of arrestees,
the article describes a Japanese criminal justice system
with virtually no bail, strip searches for traffic
violations, and a conviction rate of 98% -- about that of
Stalinist USSR. In contrast, of 12,615 complaints of
torture and abuse filed against police over the last 40
years, only 15 cases were tried, and only \half\ of that 15
resulted in punishment for police officers.
Citing "a typical example," of Japanese justice, the
article tells of a day laborer released after 16 years in
prison. The laborer was coerced into a false confession
during six months of detention in three different police
stations outside Tokyo. During that time, the laborer
says, "officers beat him on the head with fists, trampled
his thighs, and ordered him to 'apologize' to a photo of
the dead woman as they burned incense for her spirit in the
interrogation room. They interrogated him for a total of
172 days as much as 13 hours a day."
Other methods of interrogation, according to the
\Times\ article, involve telling suspects that their
families will suffer if they don't confess or that an
interrogation won't end without a confession. The article
cites human rights attorneys who have estimated forced
confessions to be as high as 50%. Suspects may be held in
custody for up to 23 days with no charges, bail, right to
an attorney, or court supervision.
Nor is there much objection to this brutality by the
Japanese public. The Japanese Civil Liberties Union has
only 600 members, as compared to 280,000 ACLU members.
Instead, says the \Times\ article, "most Japanese place a
high degree of confidence and trust in police and assume
that suspects under arrest probably committed the crime."
Those who wish to cite Japan's low murder rate as
proof that gun control works, had better think again.
And if after reconsidering the issue they still advocate
the Japanese approach, those Americans who value the
concepts of fairness and justice would do well to
understand what the goal of those who advocate gun control
actually is: the importation of fascism to America.
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