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Getting arrested in Japan

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Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#351

Post by 9x39 »

wisty wrote: post #343
9x39 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if there were a real assumption of innocence, jail would be pleasant and comfortable, and if you were WFH you wouldn't miss a day. At some point, you have to hold the person and figure out if they're a danger or not. Not everything is an unpaid ticket, and jail is probably unpleasant because everyone involved is unpleasant. Has it ever been otherwise? >pay a bond which you will never get back (because you are too po…

IIRC the US has a bizzare system where you get a loan for bail from a private loan shark, so you pay a (not refunded) bond to the loan shark who pays the bail, then the loan shark (sorry, bail lender) eats the loss (or hires bounty hunters) if you skip town.

Mmm, yes, common for indigent defendees. Let's say you get accused of something serious and are given a $50k bond. You either have to to put up $50k, hire a bail bondsman who puts up 10% of that in cash, or sit in jail.

The bondsman guarantees your appearance, but often charges tons of interest or other fees that cost you that $5k, plus whatever collateral you can muster.

Apparently a handful of states bypass the bondsman approach by allowing defendants to post the 10% of the bond in cash to the court itself, and then refunding it minus small fees if the defendant makes their appearances.

Overall, I see where defendants come from but the courts want appearances, and failures to appear aren't rare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_to_appear

(don't go to court if you can avoid it)

Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#352

Post by lazyasciiart »

hparadiz wrote: post #210
pessimizer wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They dismiss the case because it's not worth the time. I don't know what this means in the context of the US justice system. They're not paid on commission. They're being paid to be there no matter what happens. They dismiss the case because the cop didn't bother to show up, or they didn't have any evidence against your defense. The reason you (as the person who got ticketed) don't show up to court is because you k…

Large Criminal Justice systems like NYC have a large population and it's easy to end up being thrown in a cell and forgotten. Having a lawyer or not is the biggest difference in outcomes. I sat in on a lot of court cases in Philly when dealing with a case. Saw 17 year olds locked up with no lawyer over a simple drug case while a guy caught dealing pounds hired a lawyer and got off with nothing after completing a "reh…

He had a lawyer. He had multiple hearings at which the prosecution said "we're not ready, be back in six months".

Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#353

Post by nihonde »

bradchris wrote: post #192
nihonde wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You clearly have a different view of “innocent until proven guilty” than most US citizens, which is fine, maybe you aren’t one, but that line of rhetoric is going to be anathema to most people on this website. Not that the US criminal system isn’t its own complete mess, but thank God for the concept of bail (going about your life outside of jail until trial or dismissal, within certain parameters) and right to see a…

We're not talking about the US. We're talking about Japan, where the authorities are extremely conservative and cautious. Most Japanese people know how to stay completely clear of trouble. Ask yourself why this person did not.

Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#354

Post by wisty »

kelnos wrote: post #185
wisty wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it's seen as a God-given truth that no innocent person should ever be punished. Partly because it was founded (in part) by oppressed minorities fleeing states where the were constantly harassed by authorities. (Irony - the US's approach hardly fixed the issue). But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime?

> In the US, it's seen as a God-given truth that no innocent person should ever be punished. That's a rather rose-tinted view of criminal justice here... I do hear that sentiment a lot here, but it's just words, and as you sort of hint at, the reality doesn't match the words. > But is it OK to risk punishing a few innocent people if it greatly reduces the amount of suffering caused by crime? That's a big philosophica…

> would you be ok going to prison as an innocent person, as a known, understood, and societally-accepted side-effect of a safer society?

Yes, more so than if it was someone else.

Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#356

Post by nihonde »

fzeroracer wrote: post #184
nihonde wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The charges were dropped. Regardless of your opinions on how an orderly government or justice system should run or how criminals should be treated, in this situation what happened was an innocent person was tortured by the state.

Charges were dropped does not mean innocent. It means the investigation determined that the case wasn't worth pursuing. Japan has strict rules about importing drugs. The lack of drug abuse in Japan is one of the reasons it's not a shithole like nearly everywhere else. Obviously foreigners are in the crosshairs for that particular category of transgressions, since they come from places with different attitudes toward certain drugs, and since they get sent stuff in the mail. You can be pretty sure that she got the message that the Japanese authorities wanted to send her.

Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#357

Post by nihonde »

EA-3167 wrote: post #212
nihonde wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If the only way that Japan can be clean and orderly is by abusing people for months at a time only to drop charges, you have to ask if maybe that's a problem. The conviction rate and reliance on often questionably obtained confessions is also a problem that's hardly only noticed by outsiders.

Have you visited literally any city outside Japan or Singapore lately? Law and order works, whether you like it or not. They're allowed to do it their way. Results speak for themselves.

Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#358

Post by [deleted] »

nihonde wrote: post #356
fzeroracer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charges were dropped. Regardless of your opinions on how an orderly government or justice system should run or how criminals should be treated, in this situation what happened was an innocent person was tortured by the state.

Charges were dropped does not mean innocent. It means the investigation determined that the case wasn't worth pursuing. Japan has strict rules about importing drugs. The lack of drug abuse in Japan is one of the reasons it's not a shithole like nearly everywhere else. Obviously foreigners are in the crosshairs for that particular category of transgressions, since they come from places with different attitudes toward…

[deleted]

Re: Getting arrested in Japan

#359

Post by VincePlatt »

csa wrote: post #311
VincePlatt wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might find her explanation of why she was detained interesting: https://youtu.be/Q2epTf2IW1g?si=ipy4m3rgFDw3b3cD

I will bet dollars to doughnuts that she had been warned multiple times about “risky” behavior. I’m guessing either she didn’t understand the warnings, or she didn’t follow their guidance. Simple example, they may have asked her to follow a procedure before leaving the country, and she didn’t because she “thought it was over”. The law enforcement machine in Japan doesn’t like to arrest people. 99% of the time or so,…

> I will bet dollars to doughnuts that she had been warned multiple times about “risky” behavior.

Your theory lines up best with Occam's Razor: it's the more likely and simple theory, and probably true. Even so... what counts as "risky"? And the reason for her detention was having been sent something illegal from the outside. The speculation has been OTC drugs which are legal elsewhere but not in Japan. But what would that have to do with "risky" previous behavior? Granted, she missed responding to an email while she was out of country, but that hardly seems substantive either.

Honestly, it seems much more likely that she was targeted because she's visible on social media or because she's black or because she's female; or perhaps she's in some undocumented category of special contempt because she's all of those things.

On that note, I checked out her social media and she showed a property remodel and after purchasing property in Japan. It seems to me like that might show the way to others too. What better way to dissuade future immigration by simply randomly detaining folks in categories they don't like? Of course they would never do something so unseemly so as to make laws specifically disallowing blacks, single females, or even just foreigners but then again the pendulum in Japanese politics is swinging towards conservative isolationism again, no? So, it wouldn't be surprising. And if her own testimony on YouTube is to be believed and she isn't omitting anything, then I have little reason to believe any other version of this.

All that aside, and to keep this in perspective, I have no doubt that Japanese treatment of prisoners in general and even of foreigners is still by and large very good; but it's still unsettling to hear about how this was handled and about how "hostage justice" is the norm there. It seems beneath like it should be beneath them and it's very surprising to learn this about their system.

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