USALI Affiliated Scholar Bruce Aronson’s article on Japan’s criminal justice system was featured in The Diplomat.
Carlos Ghosn and Japan’s ‘99% Conviction Rate’
Examining Japan’s criminal justice system from a comparative perspective reveals the nuance behind an often-cited statistic.
March 31, 2020
Bruce Aronson
The arrest and criminal prosecution of Carlos Ghosn, together with his dramatic flight from Japan, have focused unprecedented international attention on Japan’s criminal justice system. Much of the resulting commentary has highlighted a single statistic: Japan’s purported conviction rate of 99 percent. The reality is more complicated. In both the United States and Japan the overwhelming majority of criminal cases are cleared without trial, and conviction rates in the remaining contested cases are strikingly high. However, the methods of clearing cases and calculating conviction rates differ. Why has there been so little discussion of comparable issues in these different systems?
There have been two fundamental problems. First is the basic principle of comparative law that I learned in law school: one should always try to avoid the trap of comparing “my theory with your practice.” Abstract theory always looks better than the troubling realities of practice. The value of comparative law lies in utilizing the study of another country’s system to shed new light, including a better understanding of your own system.
Second is the unfortunate tendency to quickly resort to broad cultural generalizations and stereotypes whenever there is a discussion of Japan. This is true of both critics and defenders of Japan’s criminal justice system. The press in Japan has often been critical of Ghosn while the Western media has generally been more receptive to his criticisms of the Japanese system. Cultural images are quickly deployed in “support” of such views. A view of culture as the determining factor in explaining differences in legal systems makes comparisons both difficult and largely meaningless.
Problems in finding comparable data make the analysis of conviction rates a complicated task. Data in the United States, which has a complex federal structure, are only fragmentary concerning the bulk of the cases, which occur at the state level. Data in Japan, a unitary system, are far more systematic. The two systems also include different categories of cases in “conviction rates,” making an apples-to-apples comparison quite a challenge.
Read the entire article here:
https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/carlos-ghosn-and-japans-99-conviction-rate/