That Japanese Man Yuta
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020
11:10 · 82K views · Jan 28, 2020
Yuta explains what Japan's 99% conviction rate actually means, noting that prosecutors drop cases unless confidence is very high. He argues that the number is widely misunderstood and cites his sources.
Recommended as a sourced, nuanced corrective whenever the Japanese justice system's conviction rate is raised.
4 comments from Hacker News
This 99% number does not mean what people think it means. The Japanese prosecution system is a pipeline that strongly filters out unlikely-to-be-convicted cases from the very beginning. Long before you are convicted, you might not even be arrested, or your case gets dismissed earlier in the pipeline. Here is a video, with references, from a relatively trustworthy source: this video
I'm not Japanese, but I've seen this Japanese person explaining the situation informally but thoroughly. this video The premise is, yes 99% percent is a measured rate but also has no utility in a discussion if the other parts of the big picture is ignored.
You might want to hear what Yuta has to say about this[1]. It's not as black and white, basically. 1: this video
The high conviction rate seems to be because cases are dropped unless the prosecution's confidence is very high, rather than letting it go to trial. this video