Forced Confessions and the Japanese Justice System
It seems that the media has uncovered more evidence of how if someone gets arrested in Japan, they could be in big trouble. This quote from the Mainichi shows that a taxi driver spent more than two years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit:
The man was handed a three-year prison term in November 2002 after pleading guilty to the charges during his trial. He was released on parole in January 2005 after being jailed for two years and one month. However, police subsequently learned that another man under arrest is responsible for the rape and other attempted rape cases.
A quick note: judging by the write-up in The Economist, the Mainichi didn’t get all of its facts straight. The man actually pleaded not guilty and asserted his innocence throughout the trial. He had a credible alibi, and was able to demonstrate how he couldn’t possibly have committed the crime. Unfortunately, as is routinely the case in Japan, he was convicted based on the confession he was forced into signing after three days of intense interrogation.
The dots are not difficult to connect here–the authorities made a public apology when they figured out they were wrong, but have no idea where the freed “rapist” has gone. By simple logical extrapolation one quickly realizes that the cops might not have any idea where many convicted rapists (and murderers) are at the moment. Of course, it might not be that far-fetched to assume that some of those guys are innocent too, so it’s probably not something to get all worked up about.
Question 1: Do police force suspects to confess in Japan?
There are a lot of percentages floating around these days. The 99.9% conviction rate and an 86.6% rate of ‘full confession by the accused’ are two such statistics that regularly appear in writing related to this topic. While confessions are sought by authorities in most countries when it comes to criminal cases, no other country in the industrialized world can boast confession rates anywhere near Japan’s.
Confessions are important partly because they are believed to be the first step on the road to rehabilitation in the eyes of the court and society as a whole. Additionally, most prosecutors won’t touch a case unless they are guaranteed to win. Confessions, voluntary or forced, are an integral part of that certainty of conviction (note: prosecutors, as in the infamous Sayama case, are often not required to disclose evidence).
There also happens to be a woeful lack of crime scene investigative skills/determination on the part of police in Japan. Confessions, from the perspective of police, prosecutors, and the court, are nice because they immediately make up for the fact that the names of witnesses were not noted, pictures and statements were not taken, and blood samples were forgotten. Whether this inattention to detail is a result of the dependence on confessions, or, conversely, the confessions are necessitated by a lack of professional astuteness on the part of the police force, is a bit like getting involved in an argument about whether the chicken or the egg came first.
Of course, as can be seen on TV, there are occasions when the police are forced to do a more comprehensive job of collecting evidence and protecting crime scenes. Look closely though, and one notices a pattern: the instances when police are seen spending extended periods of time jotting things on clipboards are usually either when something big has been broken, someone really famous or very young was involved, or the media has once again (miraculously) arrived at the same time as investigators.
In agreement with the allegations just leveled, the 1991 White Paper on Police called for:
the establishment of a ‘Police With Crime Investigation Capabilities’. This would involve, amongst other things, the introduction of ’scientific knowhow’ into investigative activities, the improvement of investigative skills, and the development of ‘high-calibre’ investigators.
This “culture of confession” that is at the heart of the Japanese justice system goes a long way in negating the value of thorough investigation, so actual progress on the recommendations made internally in 1991 has been difficult to identify.
Wouldn’t it therefore make sense not to confess while being interrogated? If the police don’t have much (or any) evidence, or have thrown some of it out (as is the case with the evidence from the recent murder and dismemberment involving the Muto siblings), then wouldn’t it be better to just keep quiet during interrogations?
It would appear that the system has already thought of that one and moved decisively to safeguard against it. The ace up the authorities’ collective sleeve is daiyo kangoku. Daiyo kangoku can be translated as ’substitute prison’ in English, and in practice it is a very effective confession generator.
These substitute prisons are usually located in koban (police boxes), and they are perhaps the best display of the incredible autonomy from outside oversight, both political and operational, that is enjoyed by the police in Japan. The daiyo kangoku system was put into place in 1908 in response to a shortage of prison space. That shortage, needless to say, no longer exists.
Police, under pressure to improve crime clearance rates, continue to take advantage of the daiyo kangogu system. Police are allowed to detain suspects for up to 24 days; the suspect spends most of that time without the help of a lawyer or many of the protections that would safeguard the health and sanity of suspects in other modern countries. During the initial 72 hours of confinement a suspect can be held without charge, and access to a lawyer comes at the suspect’s expense.
If three days of interrogation are not enough for the police to get what they want from the accused, they can request that the court extend the period of confinement by an additional 10 days (this request is granted 99% of the time). If those first two weeks aren’t enough, then another 10 day period will be requested and granted.
24 days with only limited access to legal counsel, and few limits on interrogation techniques (despite protections legislated on behalf of detainees), is a long time to hold out! The direct access to the accused enjoyed by the police usually results in a confession whether the suspect is guilty or not.
For those already thinking it, you are correct: police in most industrialized nations don’t have half the power that Japanese police are afforded. The only tangible outside check on power would have to be the prefectural and national Public Safety Committees which, as Walter A. Ames wrote in Police and Community in Japan, “…are usually filled by elderly and conservative men who almost always defer to police decisions”.
Maximum pressure, such as withholding meals, physical coersion, and sleep deprivation, is applied by police and investigators to make sure that a confession is signed.
It is worth noting that the justice system enables all of this. Videotapes and recordings are not needed (indeed they’re not allowed!) in the interrogation room; naturally, there are many cases where forced confessions have occurred. It is likely that a significant percentage of those forced confessions are indeed false. The fact that defense lawyers habitually warn investigators against forcing confessions from their clients is evidence both that forced confessions happen and that defense lawyers are allowed little or no participation when interrogations take place.
So, do police force suspects to confess in Japan? The answer, as in many countries, is yes. The troubling part about the situation in Japan, however, is that confessions are obtained in a surprisingly high number of cases, and that there are no guarantees that police aren’t resorting to human rights abuses to get suspects to sign police-drafted confessions.
Question 2: Are forced confessions a big problem in Japan?
A prominent member of the entertainment industry has finally decided to raise his voice on this subject. A new movie titled “I Just Didn’t Do It” by director Masayuki Suo (of “Shall We Dance” fame), is attempting to paint a realistic picture of the judicial system for a Japanese audience. An article in the Economist states that the movie:
…depicts how suspects, whether guilty or innocent, are brutalised by the Japanese police, and how the judges side with the prosecutors. Mr Suo argues that suspects are presumed guilty until proven innocent, and that the odds are stacked massively against them being so proven.
The resulting human rights violations that routinely take place under the auspices of the Japanese penal system are common knowledge among international watchdogs such as Amnesty International and the United Nations. Amnesty has highlighted a scary element in all of this by drawing attention to the fact that Japan is one of only two nations in the G8 that continues to execute convicted felons (the other nation being the United States of America). Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan pointed out that executions levied on the heels of a forced confession mean that there are likely innocents on death row (and under tombstones) in Japan. Including arguments about how forced confessions can eventually lead to unwarranted death sentences is helpful here in showing how serious a problem this is in a modern country like Japan.
Question 3: What is being done about this?
Reform is under way! Major revisions have been made to the number of people allowed to pass the bar exam each year, and juries will be included in a limited number of cases in the future. However, the energy being put into producing more lawyers and increasing the size of the judicial system is not borne of an interest in protecting the rights of the average (alleged) groper, bike thief, or kidnapper, rather it is a reaction to the realities of modern society in Japan and simple economics. More people are choosing to sort out their problems in court these days, and the system is slowly being forced to allow more public participation in the way that justice is served.
Even though public participation should increase in the future, no legislation has been passed to alter the daiyo kangoku system. Amnesty acknowledged as much in a press release dated June 4th, 2005:
While welcoming the recent legislation to improve the treatment of prisoners, Amnesty International cautioned that there remain major deficiencies that need to be addressed urgently.”Secrecy prevails under the Daiyo Kangoku (pre-trial) detention system. Unmonitored interrogations and forced confessions are unacceptable”.
In the end, almost nothing is currently being done to curb the number of forced and false confessions that are produced by the Japanese criminal justice system.
Conclusion
The Japanese police force pursues investigations within a criminal justice system that allows them a carte blanche of legal powers, and forced confessions are a common by-product of that environment.
As is sometimes the case, it has taken a movie (I Just Didn’t Do It) by a well-liked domestic writer/director to get this issue to show up on the radar in Japan. While many observers outside of Japan recognize that there are some shocking flaws in the justice system of one of the most modern societies in the world, relatively few people in Japan have any idea about how that system actually works. Police are reasonably well respected in Japan, and most citizens, much like the movie’s lead character Teppei Kaneko, believe that their innocence will be proven in a court of law. That, as has been demonstrated on numerous occasions, is often not the case.
Even though media attention to this issue is undoubtedly a good thing, arguments that the Japanese police force is monitored by a free and active press aren’t convincing. While the media is quick to pounce on obvious slip-ups by police, it largely abstains from any journalistic investigative work into criminal cases or allegations of police corruption.
In his book Miyazawa points out that the Japanese media receives most of its crime-related information directly from the police. All of the powers granted to the police dwarf the relative influence of public opinion as expressed by the media; in fact, police seem to be far more sensitive to public criticism about the progress or speed of investigations than to any possible flare-ups due to lack of procedural restraint.
It does seem, however, that the spotlight now being shown on forced and false confessions is making at least a small difference. This past week a large group of people were let off the hook in a vote-buying scandal because the court agreed that they had been forced to confess. Whether or not their ability to win an acquittal had anything to do with the fact that they are linked to politics is another argument altogether, but the fact that the court was willing to publicly state that investigators had used unsavory tactics to expedite handing the case over to a prosecutor (who has since seen his career go up in smoke because he was part of the 0.1% who has actually lost a court case) can’t be overlooked.
The average citizen will hopefully be worried after seeing the movie. Perhaps a bit of that worry will be voiced, and the slow path to reform might be embarked upon. It is clear, however, that an increased number of law professionals will have little effect on the treatment of suspects under the daiyou kangoku system; presumed guilt, as in the case of the taxi driver wrongfully convicted of rape, will likely be the name of the game in Japan for quite some time to come.
Works Cited
Ames, Walter A. Police and Community in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
“Japanese Justice: Confess and be done with it.” The Economist 8 Feb. 2007.
Miyazawa, Setsuo, Frank G. Bennett, Jr., and John O. Haley. Policing in Japan: A Study on Making Crime. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
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