Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
There are fewer crimes in general, so more forces to dedicate to solving them. The typical police force in the US, for example, solves more crime per person by the numbers but a lower percentage by the actual number of crimes. Also, the severity of Japanese crime tends to be much lower so it`s easy to dedicate a force to every severe or violent crime.
As for whether the conviction rate is the actual rate of solving crime - I seriously doubt it.
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I think, as with most things, the statistics don't really illustrate the reality much. With certain types of crime in Japan, the report rate might just be low, so it looks like there isn't as great a presence as there perhaps really is. Also I think I heard that outside of actual murder investigations, autopsies aren't as common as they are in the UK or the USA, so if there are practices like like, it's possible things slip under the radar. My only interactions with police in Japan has been asking for directions and once I was pulled over on my bike, but they just wanted to warn me there was broken glass on the road.
Someone said something about special forces for big incidents? That rings pretty true to me. At the end of my stay in Japan bits of a body was found on the railway track. We didn't realize what was going on at the time (being oblivious to the news/announcements), but we saw a squad of armed police in full gear heading for the river and the track. As it happened, my friend's Host father was there when the legs were found (he called us shortly after we saw the police to tell us to go home because some guy with a knife had been seen and was suspected to still be in the area). At any rate, these were totally different guys than the usual ploddies we saw around town. Different uniforms and attitude.