Why Japan needs criminal-justice reform

Mains Paper 4: Polity
Prelims level: Criminal Justice System
Mains level: Comparison of the Indian constitutional scheme with that of other countries Parliament and
State Legislatures - structure, functioning, conduct of business, powers & privileges and issues
arising out of these

Context

•  Carlos Ghosn, a Brazilian-born executive with French and Lebanese citizenship, has been accused of falsifying financial reports and hiding $44 million of personal income
•  Japan’s police recently threw the chairman of Nissan Motor Co., one of the country’s largest auto manufacturers, into a jail cell.
•  This might sound like justice holding corporate executives accountable for white-collar crime is good.

Analysing the problem

•  The problem is that Japan’s justice system is focused on forcing confessions, not on determining whether a suspect is engaged in wrongdoing.
•  This inevitably leads to miscarriages of justice.
•  In 2008, a Japanese court reversed a lower court’s ruling and declared that three Japanese bank executives hadn’t broken the law. But their wrongful conviction had come almost a decade earlier and, by the time they were exonerated, the three were old men, their lives and careers ruined.
•  The people unfairly imprisoned by Japan’s unfair and arbitrary justice system are not high or mighty.
•  Most people who are intimidated (or beaten) into signing false confessions by the Japanese police are simple blue-collar citizens who were arrested and charged because the police and prosecutors needed someone to blame for a crime.
•  Japan’s fabled 99% conviction rate isn’t anything to brag about it’s a sign that the rule of law is sacrificed to the desire to maintain the appearance of order.
•  This antiquated, barbarous system almost certainly has negative consequences for Japan’s economy.
•  Rule of law not simply keeping order, but determining guilt or innocence systematically and fairly is extremely important for any economic system.

Why it needs reform so urgent?

•  Japan’s lack of rule of law almost certainly makes companies less efficient.
•  The police and prosecutors are so determined and so easily able to convict anyone who gets accused of a crime, executives tend to avoid making tough but necessary economic decisions.
•  Japan’s weak rule of law discourages entrepreneurship.
•  A young businessman has the choice of either striking out on his own and trying to build a new company, or taking the safe path and working his way up through the ranks as a salaryman.
•  If success simply paints a target on an entrepreneur’s back, the risk will be so high that few will start businesses no one wants to end up like Horie.
•  Weak rule of law deters high-skilled foreigners from wanting to work in Japan.
•  In under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has been liberalizing its immigration laws.
•  The vast majority of its immigrants have been low-skilled workers rather than the highly productive professionals, businesspeople and entrepreneurs that the leadership would like.
•  Part of this is due to Japan’s relatively low white-collar salaries and rigid hiring system.
•  But part of it might be that elite foreigners feel uneasy about living under the threat of an unfair, arbitrary justice system that could turn them from professionals to prisoners at any moment.

Way forward

•  The first step is to change the law governing the 23-day holding period.
•  Suspects should be given the right to have a lawyer with them at all times, and to be able to refuse questioning.
•  Judges should be directed to deny most police requests for long holding periods, and suspects should be allowed to post bail.
•  All police interrogations should be recorded, not just those involving serious crimes.
•  Additionally, suspects who are exonerated should have the right to sue for wrongful arrests in civil court and receive substantial damages.
•  These legal changes would inevitably lead to cultural changes prosecutors would learn to build cases rather than relying on confessions, and police would learn to gather evidence rather than simply rounding up the usual suspects.
•  Under the Abe administration, Japan has been making strides toward reforming its corporate system.
•  If those modernization efforts are to succeed, the legal and criminal-justice system must be reformed as well. No modern economy can afford to skimp on the rule of law.

Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) “Sulh-i kul” of Akbar was associated with
A. A universally applicable system of ethics
B. An agreement between Mughal rulers to govern the subas more efficiently
C. Distribution of rank and perks between Subadars
D. Civil and criminal justice of the darbar

Answer: A

Mains Questions:
Q.1) Critically evaluate the Japan’s justice system is focused on forcing confessions, not on determining whether a suspect is engaged in wrongdoing.