Japan: 40 incarcerated per 100k population [1] USA: 655 incarcerated per 100k population [2]
[1] https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/japan [2] https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/united-states-america
You could also look at the rate of crimes per capita in each country. For instance, murders per capita: 4.96 in the U.S. vs 0.26 in Japan [0]. If we take this to represent base-rate criminality in that population, then we have a 19:1 US:Japan murder ratio, with only a 16:1 US: Japan incarceration ratio. Japan incarcerates more per unit murder.
Of course this is a toy model, it's all a big feedback loop, etc., but I hope it serves to illustrate the point.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
So is this the kind of thing you measure with calipers, or…
Though I do not use the example myself, preferring the murder rate example, the parent's suggestion is a reasonable way to control for this inter-society difference. I would bet that Japanese in the U.S. evince rates of criminality more similar to those of Japanese in Japan than to the rest of American society. It's an empirical question; whether merely asking the question is racist or not given your particular sentiments about what's racist is beside the point.
What makes you believe that? If true, what might cause that to be the case?
As for why, there are a few reasons. One interesting one is selection effects (immigrants to a new country are not a random sample of the old country's population). There is culture, of course, probably the biggest factor, as well as other inheritances (material goods / wealth, genes, disease burden...).
I agree with you that we can't tell from a single gene whether someone is likely to be a criminal or not. I'd like you to consider this example, where hopefully I only use premises you already believe:
Some people are predisposed to becoming addicted to drugs. We can make better-than-chance bets about who these people are based on their genomes. We also know that people who are addicted to drugs are more likely to be on the wrong side of the law (and, sadly, are often by definition on the wrong side of the law). So, we conclude that, given someone's genome, we can make better-than-chance bets about that person's likelihood of being on the wrong side of the law.
It's a simplistic example, but hopefully that helps get the idea across. Doing this sort of thing isn't super practical right now, but it will be soon! [oh boy.]
Example of flawed reasoning similar to yours: genes have probably an impact on the way we speak (it's impacting the shape of our tongue somehow, etc etc). So maybe the French have their accent due to some genetic factors, and we could predict someone's accent looking at their genes. Well it turns out in practice, if you have "French genes" and are born and raised in a US environment, you'll have an American accent indistinguishable from someone with "US genes"
The same goes with criminal behavior.
I agree culture is the biggie (education is part of culture).
Your example gets at a correlation that can be used to make good predictions. Better-than-chance bets. The example I gave with drug addiction supposes the reader already believes that genes have a causal relationship with drug addiction. That is, a propensity to be, say, an alcoholic can be in your genome and not a result of environmental factors.
That's some heroic effort in defense of America's high incarceration rate.
Someone else wrote wrote " Not trying to handwave away issues with the Japanese system, but scale seems relevant here. Japan: 40 incarcerated per 100k population [1] USA: 655 incarcerated per 100k population [2]"
So I read your post in that context. The conversation seemed to me to be about whether the American or Japanese justice system is "bad". Fairness would seem to be an aspect of "good" or "bad"... if you weren't trying to argue the American justice system was "good" I've lost the context of what you were trying to say.
In either case, whether it's racist or not is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Yes. That is the claim that is racist.
I appreciate you engaging. It's fun and important to talk about stuff like this.
Criminality might correlate with ethnicity. Assuming this means causality is the thing that is racist.
2) "More likely to behave similarly" is a considerably wider net than just crime rates
3) I think the mainstream view is that East Asians of all stripes commit considerably less crime than average. It's certainly true of violent crime, which is something I've looked in to.
This point was used to defend Japan's justice system as being far more benign than the US.
However, Japan's justice system may in fact be far more unforgiving that the US' if Americans are, in general, more likely to commit crime. Which is perfectly fair point to make (although inconclusive for various reasons).
If (for whatever reason) Americans are more likely to commit more crimes, they are, all else being equal, more likely to be in jail.
Of course many things can be true at the same time. Japan can have a brutal justice system and have a very docile, law abiding population. Maybe the brutality caused them to be docile. Or, America can have an abusive justice system, and a population that needs to be more incarcerated than others.
Either way, the criminality of the Japanese is a relevant factor if America's incarceration rate is made relevant
If you no-showed at work for 3 weeks, would you lose your job? But if you confess, you could be out today.
Here is an account of being arrested and detained in Japan[1]. It's worth a read, especially given the ending.
[1] https://nymag.com/vindicated/2016/11/truth-lies-and-videotap...
For comparison, back in the Land of the Free, here's a kid in New York who was jailed for three years on Rikers Island for a similar false accusation of theft:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/before-the-law
The 3 years might be (though I'm not convinced for some jurisdictions), but the overall shape of the case is, I think, depressingly common in the US...
https://gaijinass.com/2017/03/30/brutal-realities-of-prison-...
Inquisitorial systems are pretty common among civil law countries e.g. much of Europe, and not intrinsically better or worse than the adversarial system usually seen in common law countries -- indeed they are sometimes used by the latter for specific purposes like summary offences and coronial inquests.
We can hold hands at the bottom of the pit, no need for a winner.
> litteraly lie to you
BTW in a lot of countries they are basically immune to perjury, so this is just par for course
Didn't America set up their system after the peace treaty? They literally wrote the constitution, no?
>Men were killed with piping, work tools, and crude homemade knives called shanks. One man was partially decapitated after being thrown over the second-tier balcony with a noose around his neck. The corpse was then dragged down and hacked up. A fire had been set in the gymnasium to burn a pile of corpses, but it had gotten out of control and burned through the roof. Besides the fire that had been set in the Psychology Wing, a fire was also set in the Protestant Chapel. The Protestant Chaplain had been nicknamed "Ax Handle" for his participation in the Night of the Ax Handles four years earlier. The Catholic Chapel next door was left untouched. Situated across the hall from the main control center, the prison library also was only touched by smoke. A third fire had been set in the records office, burning all records that could have been used as evidence related to the prisoners' civil rights claims in the Duran Consent Decree.
I think the country that has a justice system where being blowtorched until your brain explodes is a possible consequence of detention compares unfavorably to the country that has zero prison riots. It's also worth noting that the Human Rights Watch report on prison conditions in Japan contains zero mentions of the word "rape"—let alone "gang rape". Is it so hard to admit that they have to be doing something right?
Put yourselves in the shoes of a Japanese citizen—what could possibly make you look at American prison conditions and think "wow, I wish we had that instead", riots, gang rape, drugs, and all? What aspects of Japanese justice are so intolerable that they make all "palatial" by comparison? It's true that Japanese guards are strict—are Supermax guards so much nicer?
I think the country that has the highest incarceration in the world could learn something from the country that enjoys the lowest incarceration rate in the developed world. Whether it's civilization arrogance or some pathological aversion to discipline, I don't know—but it seems bizarre to me that a prison system where you could end up with a mouthful of your own severed genitals could serve as a model to anyone.
As for confessions, here's another example of the superior American way.
>Several hours into the interrogation, Scott told the detectives he thought he needed a lawyer, an attempt to invoke his constitutional right to have an attorney present during questioning. But APD detectives testified last week they believed Scott was only thinking about asking for a lawyer—the same response they gave at Springsteen's trial last summer. When Springsteen asked about a lawyer during his interrogation, detectives left the room. When they returned, they promptly changed the subject.
>And in the Scott interrogation's most infamous moment, Detective Merrill brought a revolver into the interrogation room to "help" Scott remember what he might've done that night at the yogurt shop through some "role playing." Gun in hand, Merrill walked around, then stood behind Scott and jabbed him in the head with what appeared to be the barrel of the gun. Merrill testified that it wasn't the gun but his finger. Nonetheless, the few seconds of video are startling. While the state could argue that the moment occurred well into the confession and couldn't have affected previous admissions, what does it take to render a confession false?
They also dont do trial by jury, but inquisitorial judges who you have to prove your innocence too. The judges their dont like you making them go to trial, so good luck proving your case, after all you should have confessed already.
Also Japanese conditions in their detention systems makes the American system look down right palatial. The whole system is designed to punish even moreso than the American system.