Problems with Japanese Justice System Highlighted

I have to admit, while I accept that they do a lot of good work around the world, I have found myself in disagreement often with groups like Amnesty International. Their views and some of their protests derive from a place which can be very naive, and they can have a tendency to overstate certain problems in an attempt to build up media mobs.

That being said, the BBC yesterday had a story highlighting an Amnesty International report on death row inmates in Japan. They raise a number of important issues, while at the same time admitting that the true extent of the situation is unknowable due to incredible secrecy in the Japanese system. This is actually one of the most telling points of the whole story. Whether or not you agree with the death penalty (Amnesty International are of course completely against it, calling for an immediate moratorium), one of the biggest problems with the Japanese system is its closed nature, and the lack of public accountability. It has been said that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’, and I am a firm believer in this as a concept. It is impossible to maintain credibility or to make certain of no abuses without bringing a lot more public scrutiny to bear.

I have heard many stories over the years about round the clock interogations and ‘forced’ confessions at the hands of Japanese police. One incident which happened to a family member once involved being picked up by the police for parking in a loading zone (the family member in question had been too sick to drive, and was sitting in a public toilet trying to gather themselves for the drive home), and was subsequently taken to a police station and drilled for more than 2 hours about how bad they had been. The police demanded a promise that this would never happen again, to which the honest response was ‘if I am ever in the same situation I will of course do the same thing again’. Anyway, the point is that because of the lack of accountability and publicity, there can be a tendency of some police officers to over-reach, and this is a small and anecdotal example of one issue raised in the Amnesty International report.

I’m not trying to paint all Japanese police as villains either. They do a lot of very fine work, and solve a high proportion of crimes. Nor am I going to debate the issue of the death penalty from scratch here. But there are certainly a lot of issues that need to be addressed. I noted above that police have a lot of leeway in interogations, and also just mentioned that the police solve a high proportion of crimes. Unfortunately, there are concerns that these two particular facts are, at least to some degree, related. The BBC article states that the conviction rate in Japan is 99%. This is incredibly high, may I even say too high. Ok, maybe that’s going a little too far, but it makes a point. Its hard to believe that any organization, let alone one that is shielded froma great deal of public scrutiny and thus accountability, can be 99% effective at anything. Whatever the truth is though, one thing is certain. Like the famously closed beaurocracy in Japan, the court system also needs a heavy dose of sunshine.

The Amnesty International report also highlights the treatment of prisoners on death row, claiming that some of them go without vistors for years at a time. Apparently prisoners are held in isolation, and only allowed out for short exercise breaks every few weeks. They also claim that these conditions are leading to mental illness and delusions. It is difficult to know how much of the report is accurate, because they admit that it was a ‘challenge’ to compile evidence, especially from the inmates themselves. Still, they have compiled a long report (link below), which demands careful scrutiny.

One of the main arguments of Amnesty International is that it is government policy for no-one to be executed who is in a state of insanity, and thus many of these inmates should not be executed. Just what this means in a practical sense however is another matter altogether… Its hard to imagine that many people capable of the kinds of crimes that would see them sentenced to death (there are 100 people on death row in Japan) would be considered completely ‘sane’ by any realistic measure… And while Amnesty International claim that prison conditions have caused delusion and mental illness in inmates, it must be difficult to discern just how much is caused by the prison and how much is inherent in a serious criminal…. And to what extent these preclude the prisoner from being accountable (after all, they have already been found guilty and have had their appeals heard and dismissed by this point). These questions aside, the fact is that so much of this information is unknown and kept that way, and this has to change. Whether or not you trust the report from Amnesty International, it is wrong to have to rely on just one report, and I hope that pressure is brought to bare so that more scrutiny is given to prison conditions in general, and on death row in particular.

One last issue brought up by the BBC article that I wanted to touch on is the fact that death row inmates in Japan are executed with only a few hours warning. In fact, not even the inmate’s lawyer is to be informed prior to execution. I find this all utterly cruel and unreasonable.

* The full 93 page report from Amnesty International can be read here.

UPDATE: I tried to be as objective as possible in the title of this post, but I just love the AP’s balanced title (sarc filter on extreme): Report: Japan executes mentally ill prisoners… Talk about sensationalist media…. What is even worse is that just three paragraphs into their story on the Amnesty International (AI) report discussed above, the AP admit that the entire AI report was based on five male inmates that they never met… Hmm… I don’t doubt that there are still issues here, given the fact that there is no open oversight process in place. But I refer back to my first paragraph above, where I spoke about building up media mobs… Speak of the devil…..