
As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do - prostoalex
https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21722216-there-was-just-one-fatal-shooting-whole-2015-crime-dries-up-japans-police-hunt?fsrc=scn/tw/te/rfd/pe
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JohnJamesRambo
[https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-japan-ever-convict-men-
fo...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/does-japan-ever-convict-men-for-rape)
they could work on this. It seems all crime isn't drying up, just the things
the government wants to call a crime.

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will4274
Warning: site has malicious ads which navigate you away on mobile

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smegel
Not if you browse with javascript disabled by default.

~~~
zpr
These days, that might also be a crime.

~~~
linkregister
First they came for the Ad Blockers, but I did not speak out — because I
wasn't one.

Then they came for the VPN Users, but I did not speak out — because I wasn't
one.

Then they came for the JavaScript Disablers, — and there was no one left to
speak for me.

;)

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Houshalter
This is 20 years old, but there is something weird about Japanese crime
statistics. They might not be as good as much of a low crime society as
commonly stated: [http://sci-hub.la/10.2307/29766810](http://sci-
hub.la/10.2307/29766810) ( _Is Japan Exceptional? Reconsidering Japanese Crime
Rates_ )

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taneq
This is purely anecdotal but my sister lived in Japan for many years, and she
tells me that the policing there is very... uneven, I guess you'd describe it.
The police won't get too involved in anything that's not a sure bet to be
solved (eg. unexpected deaths are very likely to be written off as suicide)
but on the flip side, once they accuse you of something the conviction rate is
near 100%. Also if you get a speeding ticket you have to write an apology
letter saying how sorry you are, as well as pay the fine.

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kleiba
For those interested in this, there is a very good Japanese movie whose
English title is "I just didn't do it". "Based on a true story, the film
focuses on the story of a young man charged with groping on a train. Following
the events depicted in the film, he was confirmed innocent and saved from his
effective imprisonment after a five-year legal battle." [1]

You'll find in this movie exactly what the parent describes, the apology
culture as well as how difficult the system makes it for you once you've been
accused of an offense.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Just_Didn%27t_Do_It)

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agumonkey
Talking about movies, albeit a different kind, swedish movie kopps is a comedy
about a city so devoid of crime, the agents starts to make up things to keep
their job.

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kleiba
Even though this is really off-topic, Kopps is a great movie, as is Jalla
Jalla by the same director the latter being even more off-topic as it has
nothing to do with crime nor Japan but is instead a romantic comedy set in
Sweden.

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stephengillie
A group is formed to handle a perceived type of problem - a committee or task
force. They triage and rank these problems, then deal with them in decreasing
order of determined importance.

Solving each problem has costs, such as disruption to other people's lives -
both involved parties and bystanders, but this disruption is seen as a
necessary evil. Below a certain threshold of problem, solving problems becomes
too expensive, and the cost is greater than the problem-removal benefit. These
groups rarely dissolve when they are past this point, due in most cases to the
ego of an individual human or small group.

This is a generalization of many concepts, but I've never been sure what to
call it.

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hateduser2
Why ego? This is just as easily explained by habit/routine/dependence on the
group by its members

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tankenmate
“It’s hard to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on
him not understanding it” -- Upton Sinclair

It's rare for a open ended committee or organisation without founding scope to
vote for its own dissolution.

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hateduser2
I think actually that’s what I meant by dependence on the group for money or
wellbeing (livelihood?). Separating those things from ego (pride)

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Noos
If I were to speculate, I think, no, there's still plenty of crime, but like a
lot of Japanese culture, it's dealt with informally by the group. To actually
go to the police is an admission your local culture or group can't harmonize
what happened, so you need to have harmony forced on you. That doesn't mean
actual innocent or guilt; just that harmony is maintained.

If it ever has to escalate to the police in that kind of culture, it's
something really serious that the normal means of informal dealing and
restitution won't work at all. And the mindset when that happens is dangerous,
because the objective can be more "quickly restore harmony by any means
necessary" than "find the guilty." Like the old chinese kung-fu movies where
they would grab someone, torture him, then make him sign a confession. It's
more important to resolve the situation to restore balance than disrupt that
to right wrongs.

Again, this is real speculation, but Japanese are people too; they don't
somehow possess a special human nature that removes all the nasty emotional
impetus behind crime.

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larkeith
I wouldn't be surprised if this is partially the case, but the homicide rate
suggests to me that there is also a significantly lower amount of (serious)
crime - it seems difficult and unlikely that murder would or could be handled
without involving authorities.

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Nexxxeh
During the recent gun crime argument in the wake of the Vegas shooting in the
US, someone pointed to Japan as an example of strict gun laws.

Japan has more than double the suicide rate than the UK, and noticeably higher
than the US.

I wonder if some murders in Japan are written up as suicides in order to close
the case quickly?

Plus I would would guess Japanese people are more likely to kill themselves
than go on a murder spree of family members or coworkers, but that's just
based on what I've seen as an outsider.

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jopsen
Japan is notorious for extreme work ethics.. so a high suicide rate is not
surprising.

I'm don't think it's fair to make wild speculation like that without sources.
It not like they haven't investigated the high (but also falling) suicide
rate:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan)

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superquest
Reminds me how Roman soldiers built roads throughout the empire during the Pax
Romana, when they had no wars to fight.

~~~
javajosh
Indeed! However, asking modern police to do infrastructure work of that sort
might be too much. However, what police officer would turn down an opportunity
to get trained as a programmer, and then put to work in forensics, workflow,
or national cyber defense?

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roryisok
Probably just me, but economist articles never load properly (windows phone,
so there's that). Page keeps popping me back up to the top of the article,
happened 4 times and then the text disappeared. Oh well.

At least I can infer from the headline that crime is very low in Japan. I
wonder what they're doing that the rest of the world aren't

~~~
cperciva
Crime rates are dropping almost everywhere; the exceptions are short term
increases during episodes of societal disruption (e.g. wars).

One of the reasons Japan's rate is so low is that they're ahead of other
countries in the race to grow old; the vast majority of crime, and especially
violent crime, is committed by young people.

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eru
> [...] the vast majority of crime, and especially violent crime, is committed
> by young people.

Or to be more precise: young males.

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cperciva
Males are more likely to commit crimes, yes; but not necessarily as much as
conviction statistics would suggest. There is systematic under-reporting and
under-prosecution of crimes committed by females, which seems to be driven
largely by a perception that women are "harmless".

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eru
They are probably committing different kinds of infractions, too. Some of them
more criminalised than others.

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jsemrau
When I was still living in Tokyo and went shopping for groceries near my house
using my Mamachari, I would get stopped at least twice each way.

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gwilkes
That's weird, I've heard that Tokyo cops do that but I've never been stopped
once in eight years of living in Saitama (the prefecture just north of Tokyo).
It's certainly not because I blend in, I'm cacausian and 188cm tall.

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jsemrau
Well it happened to me when living in Tokyo. In other parts it might not be
like that.

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sliverstorm
Firefighters in America are doing the same thing, as buildings become more
fireproof & smoking declines.

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mongol
Come to Sweden. Police is in crisis.

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vortico
You post is tongue-in-cheek but it brings up an interesting question: Is an
experienced foreign policeman a better candidate than an untrained lifelong
citizen who is just starting a career? I would guess no, since laws and "the
way of doing things" are so different that it would be better for trainee
police to start with a clean slate.

~~~
kwhitefoot
It's almost certainly a good idea to have a few such people in a reasonably
sized group because they will be able to challenge the 'we do it this way
because we have always done it this way' mentality that eventually takes over
most long lasting groups of any kind.

~~~
vortico
"The way we do things" is the legal code, and I believe this is better changed
in court, not at a police office.

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jhiska
In other words, the police are trying to create crime so they can justify
their investigations.

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fishmeat
Beware the crappy link laced with popup ads and trackers.

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NedIsakoff
How about working on the groping issue?

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snvzz
Can you elaborate on this groping issue?

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wordpressdev
Do these stats cover the Yakuza?

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iliketosleep
That's exactly what I was wondering. As far as I know, many streets in Japan
are still ruled by the Yakuza.

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donatj
They’re supposedly having a heck of a time recruiting the younger generation.
There was a pretty good documentary about it on Netflix

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lr4444lr
Those damn herbivore/hodo-hodo/millenials... you can't even get them motivated
to join crime syndicates. </s>

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conanbatt
Heck of a time is positive!

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Giorgi
Don't they have full-scale mafia operations? Ya, fight that

