Example Of Essay On Criminal Law

A comparison of Criminal Justice Systems

A comparison of Criminal Justice Systems
The Japanese criminal justice system has an impressive conviction rate at nearly 99 percent. However, the recent months have witnessed numerous complaints due to several people confessed to having committed crimes yet they were innocent. An incident started off by through a threat posted online where an individual threatened to kill the children in a primary school including the grandchildren to the emperor. After the investigations by the Japanese police, four arrests were made, and the suspects confessed when they were taken into custody. They included a student aged 19 years. However, the perpetrator of the crime revealed himself after a few months and explained how he manipulated the computer system of innocent people using the Internet to make the threats through a virus. The purpose of his actions was to expose the wrongful acts of the police of the police and trigger changes in the criminal justice system in Japan.
The questions arising out of the incident is the reason Japanese police officers seem to value confessions. They tend to make people confess even to crimes that they did not commit, an element that has been responsible for several wrongful convictions over the years. Given that it happened to innocent users on the internet, it is possible that there are other wrongful confessions and convictions after the proceedings with the police. The Japanese police tend to go for people with criminal records besides the fact that they may have changed over the years. The police torture suspects mentally by exposing them to long hours of interrogation. Eventually, the suspects get exhausted and confess to crimes that may not have committed (Japanese Crime, 2015, p. 2). The process may take up to five depending on the mental strength of the suspect.
The interrogations take place in private rooms and the no one can tell the exact events in the rooms. However, there have been no complaints against the police using aggressive means to make the suspects confess. Yoshiki Kobayashi worked for the Japanese police for nearly 25 years, and he believes that the methods used result from the limited power bestowed upon the Japanese police enabling them to investigate crimes (Japanese Crime, 2015, p. 3). Prior to the Second World War, Japanese police abused the powers they had, which made the public demand that the police relinquish all the investigative power they had.
The Japanese criminal justice system differs from that of the United States. In the United State, law enforcement officers regard investigations as a theoretical game in which any of the suspects may be the perpetrator of the crime. They do not insist on confessions, but they question the suspects comprehensively to observe any patterns and changes in the trends of the responses given by the person. For this reason, they have much power to carry out investigations and ask questions of any nature provided they have a search warrant permitting them to hold the suspect in custody. Unlike the police in the Japanese criminal system, officers in the United States often rely on previous criminal records but they do not treat such a suspect with bias because of the criminal record. In fact, they do not pursue such suspects intending to convict them because of the past criminal record. They treat all the suspects equally and rely on the results of the investigation to institute legal proceeding against the suspect, with or without their confessions.

References

Japan Crime (2015). Why Do Innocent People Confess? (n.d.). Retrieved March 5, 2015,