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Comment by onlypassingthru | Hacker News Reader

>No other country uses it to the extent we do

That is incorrect. Japan has a 99% criminal justice conviction rate because of so many plea deals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...

Huh? This is a wild misstatement. Even your link doesn’t support this, and says that the "most likely reason" for the high rate is that prosecutors have broad discretion over whether to prosecute at all, and credits low prosecution rates and a different way of calculating the rate.

The new system has been in place for less than ten years, only covers a very limited set of crimes and is much more modeled on cooperation than coercion. The Ramseyer and Rasmusen paper reported 99.9% convictions in 1994 (49,598 of 49,643), when the law did not allow plea bargains. The rate was already above 99% long before plea deals existed.

nasty that 'statistics' are hauled out as 'proof', fuck me Japan has an unbelievable low crime rate, and some ridiculous number of criminals turn them selves in. There is something like a 90%+ rate of lost wallets just droped in a mail box and returned, and american soldiers are responsible for the bulk of violent crime in a large radius around each base. It goes on and on, not that I think that highly of the Japanese, but due credit is theres and the US is the crime, jail, more crime and corruption leader of the planet and there is nowhere worse except where the US (cia) is running some through the worst sadistic perverts they can find and support, which makes almost all of the worst crime on the planet the direct fault of america, but as we see in this case under discusion, america is now having trouble EXPORTING it's contradictions and is just eating the coolaid powder dry.

Japan has a ridiculously high crime rate for many crimes such as sexual assault.

All of their crime rates are lower than the US across all categories, except maybe bike theft. The US has anywhere from 4-10x Japan's rate of sexual assault crimes (the lower end accounting for their lower report rate).

It sort of makes sense, why would you bring a case to trial that is not complete? A complete case will always win. The trial is the final check if the case is complete.

Japan only takes cases they know they can get a prosecution on, not that they know they are guilty

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