
Japan’s Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women - adventured
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-03-16/japan-s-prisons-are-a-haven-for-elderly-women
======
austincheney
Have any of you guys deployed to a combat zone? For us fobbits (people
hopelessly stranded to the safety of the forward operating base) all the
stresses of daily life are gone.

There is no commute, no worrying about what to eat, what to wear, picking up
kids, or anything else that consumes a normal person's time. In a way it is
kind of like a vacation. You have so much disposable time to spend on hobbies,
exercise, or education.

It is very much like being in prison, except that I am not afraid of my fellow
inmates. It is strange though, because you don't get to pick your friends,
much like prison. I suspect the fellow fobbits are substantially more educated
on average than a typical prison population and probably generally healthier
physically and mentally. You would be surprised, though, at just how mentally
unhealthy many of your coworkers are when you are around them long enough to
really see it.

Unless you are extremely ambitious and psychotically disciplined that much
downtime grates on your soul. Being deployed for too long can be depressing
and you cannot escape a certain amount of emotional isolation. It is also
weird having a spouse and children and yet living apart for a year or more
like a single person.

The long term consequence of the environment is an unhealthy dose of apathy.
If you are too bored for too long you really don't care about most anything.
Unfortunately, the environment provides little motivation to care as you are
less likely to die in a combat zone stuck on a fob than driving to work in the
civilian world.

~~~
chrisseaton
> It is very much like being in prison, except that I am not afraid of my
> fellow inmates.

I don't know - our fellow FOB inmates (Afghan security forces) kept turning on
us and shooting people.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
My buddy had to shoot their translator. Funny how you don’t see things like
that on the news.

~~~
dogruck
Whoa, more details? That’s wild.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I’m probably not supposed to.... but... Their guy took them to a spot, they
camped out, he came back with an AK that night, he wasn’t supposed to, they
saw him coming from the wrong direction, he raised the rifle up, one or two of
them watched the whole thing through NODs. They found out other info on the
guy later.

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itronitron
>> “I can’t tell you how much I enjoy working in the prison factory. The other
day, when I was complimented on how efficient and meticulous I was, I grasped
the joy of working. I regret that I never worked. My life would have been
different."

I think this is a core human drive and it makes me wonder why so many
organizations seem to be fundamentally incapable of leveraging their
employees' desire to do good work, regardless of the task.

~~~
mbfg
Imagine as many jobs go away as technology takes over, what this mass feeling
will be like.

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ekianjo
>
> [https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ixs8sfqT3Wp...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ixs8sfqT3Wpw/v0/800x-1.png)

You know the article has a clear agenda when they use fancy graphcs showing
the increase of 60 years old crime without showing in comparison the increase
of 60 years old in general population in the same time frame. Which would make
sense, you know, because we are all aware Japan is aging fast.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan#/media/File:Jap...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan#/media/File:Japan_Age_Makeup_1920-2010_with_Projection_to_2060.png)

Actually hardly any difference in ratio.

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skookumchuck
It would seem more practical to put these people in a "prison" that's more of
a dormitory with a chicken wire fence than one with walls, barbed wire and
bars.

~~~
inceptionnames
Many countries offer retirement homes and financial aid for their seniors but
the Japanese are a people with a strong sense of honor and admitting that they
are in need of social, emotional and financial help can be very difficult. So
difficult that they evidently prefer going to prison.

~~~
IronWolve
Wow, Reading your comment made me wonder how bad it was, 1 in 6 will be over
80 and by 2025 they will need an additional 130,000 caregivers.

~~~
pen2l
Good observation.

And I gotta say, while I once scoffed at the idea of robots helping out at
home and giving some sense of company, it seems that such things actually
might help in this case.

My colleague was recently in a car accident and is now wheelchair-bound. I can
tell sometimes that when I’m helping, he feels conflicted in that he doesn’t
want to appear helpless and pitiful, but at the same time needs help doing
some things. Having a handy robot helper would be an enormous emotional relief
for him and would give him the sort of empowerment he really needs.

~~~
appleiigs
They don’t need robots, they need immigration. Japan has been relatively
xenophobic compared to other nations/cultures.

~~~
bone_frequency
I do believe they don't need to be replaced, they need to fix their birth
rates instead.

~~~
dmm
In a world with affordable and effective birth control having children is a
choice so it's really a question of why young people are choosing not to have
children. Why do you think that is?

Birth rates in the US are plummeting. They peaked in 2008 at 2.1/woman(the
replacement rate) and are now down to 1.7.

I can only offer anecdotes but I know several people of prime child rearing
age who don't have families. From my discussions with them, they don't feel
secure financially. Maybe people raised in a middle class environment aren't
willing to risk poverty to have kids?

Or maybe it's the endless distraction we have available to us. Or maybe it's
the increasing isolation of modern life. If you weren't raised in a coherent
household maybe you feel less of a need to create one yourself.

~~~
irrational
Again, anecdotally, but I have a lot of female coworkers who are in their 30s.
Their biological clocks are ticking hard (they talk about babies and children
all the time). As far as I can tell, the problem is none of them can find a
guy that is willing to settle down and start a family. Not because the guys
they date can't afford it, but they don't want to give up their single
lifestyle (and let's face it, they don't need to get married to have sex,
which is what used to convince guys to settle down decades ago).

One of my coworkers was so desperate when she hit her late 30s that she
stopped taking birth control and had unprotected sex with any guy that was
willing until she got pregnant. Whoever the guy was, he has no idea he
fathered a child. She just wanted him for his sperm. The kid is basically
being raised by child care centers while she continues on her career path. The
other female coworkers think she is smart and are planning on doing the same
thing if they find themselves in a similar situation when they reach their
late 30s.

~~~
Cyph0n
> Whoever the guy was, he has no idea he fathered a child.

That's just unethical. I feel sorry for the child already...

~~~
cperciva
I wonder why she wouldn't just go to a sperm bank...?

~~~
d33
I guess you get to know the genes you're going to use this way. It doesn't
make it any more ethical though.

~~~
sli
I would imagine sperm banks do something similar. They have standards for who
they accept, they won't take donations from just anyone. And I really doubt
they just roll dice and give you a random man's sperm.

Sleeping with some person doesn't tell you anything about, say, their family
medical history. Sperm banks check that stuff.

------
alecco
I still don't understand how a country with a fast aging population and
alienation of it's youth (herbivore men) has the allegedly most reliable bonds
to pay in the distant future.

Do investors see something else? Are they factoring robots or something?

~~~
adventured
They've been buying their own debt with their central bank, aggressively
debasing their standard of living to try to relieve the extreme debt pressure
& interest that has been consuming nearly half their tax revenue.

The central bank buys up the government's outstanding debt at zero interest,
removing external holdings of debt, while punishing the Yen and anyone holding
Yen assets in the process. For the government it becomes a low cost approach
to cancelling out debt. For the people of Japan, it becomes a stealth
inflation attack on their standard of living. The choices are slim though,
they already have high taxes, and the national savings rate has dropped from
high to nearly zero (formerly the people of Japan funded the big debt binge
with the high savings rate).

It's the next level up from what the Fed was doing with QE. The Fed -
supposedly - will sell a lot of its assets back into the market. The central
bank of Japan plans to just buy up its own debt and cancel it perpetually. The
Bank of Japan owns something like 43% of the Japanese Government's debt at
this point.

You can almost guarantee the US Government & Fed will do the same thing in the
next ~15 years, as US public debt hits $30+ trillion. If the US wanted to push
its debt interest costs toward zero over time, it could have the Fed start
buying up all the public debt. The cost would be debasement of the USD (the
dollar would fall, commodities would soar, the US standard of living would
fall, real inflation would spike). If you want a functioning market for your
debt, you have to pay investor's rate of desired interest. You can massage
that to some degree, which the Fed does, to try to keep interest costs under
control. In Japan's case, they've gone full QE, entirely dropping the pretense
of a market for their debt.

~~~
spaceflunky
Just out of curiosity, what does that mean for Japan's real estate market?
Does that policy cause RE prices to fall or rise?

~~~
milcron
QE is definitely a boost for asset prices, but the economy is way too complex
and interrelated to draw such direct inferences.

All things being equal, a QE program ought to raise real estate prices.

~~~
adventured
It'll only raise real-estate prices in that domestic currency, and only
insofar as the broader program consequences don't result in a collapse of
confidence in your economy, with a spiral of damage from there (otherwise
Venezuela would currently be the richest nation in world history).

You can get away with light QE. Once you go full QE, to the extent you do it
and depending on how long you do it, you'll start to see it destroy the
nation's standard of living, eventually collapsing asset prices in real terms.

------
hujun
This reminds me a Japanese movie I saw long time ago: The Ballad of Narayama
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084390/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084390/))

which is about a village where old people have to climb a mountain and left
there to die once they reached certain age; this is to save limited resource
to younger

a sad story, hope it won't become somehow true in future

~~~
eeereerews
This is called ubasute
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubasute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubasute))
and is a common theme in Japanese folklore.

~~~
teddyh
See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84ttestupa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84ttestupa)
for a similar but mythical nordic equivalent.

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myroon5
Those are really long sentences for the crimes described

~~~
t3rmi
Yeah 2-3 years for shoplifting stuff worth less than 50$ seems harsh.

~~~
mantas
On the other hand, shoplifting rate is really low. A lot of merchandise is
literally out in the streets. Security is minimal. In many European countries
shit would get stolen in no time. Yet high social trust in Japan allows this.

Well, till nanny punk comes..!

~~~
neokantian
The old woman will just keep stealing a mango once in a while, until people
finally understand her, and allow her to come to rest in a better environment.

~~~
mantas
.. and prison happens to be better environment. At least in her mind. So win-
win, harsh punishment keep youngsters at bay AND gets elders sent for rest :D

What is weird, they do have "life-long learning centers" and hobby communities
geared towards elders and whatnot. Maybe her pride didn't allow her to go to
those and declare she needs human contact? Meanwhile prison helps her to save
face in some twisted way?

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classichasclass
Particularly powerful when you look at it in the context of poverty in Japan
in general.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15891674)

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djrogers
The hung that shocked me the most about the article was the incredibly long
sentences for petty crime. I guess I’ve spent so long hearing about how
horrible sentencing is in the US that I automatically expect other first world
countries to have shorter or no jail time for such things.

In California for example, theft of less than $950 worth of goods is
considered petty theft, and would normally result in a misdemeanor or
infraction and a fine.

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sg0
Reading this somehow reminded me of Tokyo Story -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046438/?ref_=nv_sr_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046438/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

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known
Is there a correlation between Prostitution and Poverty
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_statistics_by_cou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_statistics_by_country)

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inquisitorial
Why is this on Hacker News?

~~~
exolymph
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
> more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
> answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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Noos
Uh..but aren't Japanese prisons horrid? Why are they a haven?

