50PlusCycling

Cycling here in Japan is relatively safe, and there aren’t many accidents or fatalities despite the fact that on any given day, more people in the city of Tokyo ride their bikes than the entire United States combined. What keeps the roads relatively safe in Japan is serious consequences for causing injury in a collision. If you are driving a vehicle in Japan, and get into a collision in which another person is killed, you will go to jail regardless of the circumstances 100% of the time. You will be arrested on the spot, you will not be allowed to bail out, you will remain in jail until you serve whatever sentence is handed down to you. If you get are driving drunkt and kill someone, the minimum sentence is 15 years in prison, once again, with no bail. And Japan doesn’t do things like grant early release or parole prisoners.

jon c. 

According to the information you have provided it is your statement that is not accurate.

TC1

Okay Jon, what charges have been laid against this driver?

FBinNY 

Apparently none. YET.

Note the emphasis on YET.

The SA has plenty of time to file charges. In New York, he'd next take the case to the grand jury to have her indicted. There's plenty of time, ant the total process easily takes a year or two.

50PlusCycling

Here you see the consequences of a fundamental flaw in the system. The greatest cause of an unfair system is too much fairness. Instead of the quick and firm application of justice, the system, out of fairness, holds back its hand. Those who commit a first offense often (usually) walk away with no serious punishment, and they may commit 10 or more offenses before they spend a day in jail. But by that time, their offenses have become so egregious that the face a very long sentence, and, before getting to this point, their list of victims is very long. Because they are not taught early on that there are consequences for bad behavior, they become acclimated to it, usually to the point they can’t act any other way. This is hardly “fair.”

In Japan things are different. A heavy hand is used against even first offenders. The book is thrown at them so hard and so fast that they are greatly discouraged from becoming repeat offenders.

In America, those who commit offenses are given more and more rope, and they eventually hang themselves with it. In Japan that is not the case, they don’t want to encourage further criminal behavior by misplaced good intentions. It is not only a benefit to society to be harsh on crime, but it is beneficial to whose who would be criminals, and saves them and their victims from future misery.

The results of the difference in systems is evident by the incarceration rates of each country. America, a country with a very lenient criminal justice system, has an incarceration rate 25 times higher than Japan, which has what many call an severely harsh and unfair criminal justice system. But, which system is more fair? The one which, through good intentions, condemns large numbers of people to lives of crime, and condemns others to be the victims of crime? Or is the system which so strongly punishes crime that it is almost nonexistent by Western standards?

I-Like-To-Bike

That may be your version of justice, and it may appeal to the bicycling vigilantes and the We-Are-Always-the-Victims-of-Bad-Drivers posters on A&S, but No Thanks!

Your idea that the difference in criminal activity and recidivism rates in Japan vice U.S. is strictly the product of the so-called justice system and application of punishment regardless of the circumstances that you described in your posts is ludicrous. An unbiased discussion of the subject would be more appropriate in P&R but I doubt that the mods and a significant percentage of BF posters would allow it.

SW84

I agree with your post. Those are the reasons why this country became the best country in the world, and why it's going down the tubes now. There are those that claim it will lead to a utopian society, but it will never come to fruition. Only the blind believe that forgoing punishment will lead to a better society. For decades I never saw a reason to own a gun. Now I own 5, and I have a concealed carry permit so that I can protect those around me when out in public. Always have toilet paper around the toilet so things can be cleaned up properly.

jon c. 

This is really a political rant that has no factual support and little basis in reality. It ignores most facets of the criminal justice system in favor of a gross oversimplification of incarceration practices in the respective nations.

Trakhak

I imagine you know a great deal about the topic, but, as someone who doesn't, the 25:1 incarceration ratio seems pretty damning. Can you explain what some of the factors are that make that ratio a gross oversimplification?

jon c. 

The gross oversimplification comes in the assertion that incarcerating 25 times the number of citizens is a function of a lenient justice system.

But this discussion is really too far afield from bicycling safety to be appropriate for this forum.

SW84

In my mind it falls under Advocacy, not Safety, so it is appropriate.

I-Like-To-Bike

Japan has a mono racial society with a shared cultural value system; U.S. does not.

I-Like-To-Bike

Advocacy of what? Vigilante justice?

tomato coupe

What is the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that a country with a very high incarnation rate has a lenient criminal justice system?

FBinNY 

True, especially because not of this is about positive suggestions relating to safety or bicycle advocacy.

It's mainly venting about lack of enforcement by agencies and elected officials so bt definition political.

Calsun

The district attorneys I have encountered are too lazy to do their job and focus on the numbers of convictions. Easier to take some poor person who cannot afford to hire a private attorney and coerce them into a plea bargain guilty please. Often these deals are made the day the trial is to begin and the accused person has already spent a year in jail as they cannot afford to pay the bail. Then when told that if convicted the will likely get a 15 year sentence or they can plead guilty and get a 5-year sentence, the majority of young people will take the deal.

I have witnessed police officers purger themselves on the witness stand and the judges really did not give a damn. I have received copies of police reports that claimed that a witness had stated such and such and when approached later they denied having made the statement.

A woman hit my car and then proceeded to drive away. I chased after her and boxed her in and then got her driver's license and license plate and forwarded it to the local police department. No charges were filed for the hit and run and the police told me that she was rushing her passenger to a hospital. I mentioned that all the hospitals were in the opposite direction but they did not really give a damn as she was white.

StanSeven

Exactly. The thread evolved into something other than bicycle safety or advocacy. If you want to continue with this thought, start a thread in P&R. Thread closed.