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GoNative (Offline)
Busier Than Shinjuku Station
 
Posts: 1,063
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Inverloch, Australia
12-14-2010, 03:56 AM

Here in Japan I have pretty major issues with policing and the justice system as a whole. In the vast majority of cases when investigating a crime very little physical or forensic evidence is used to gain convictions. The police still very much rely on confessions for convictions. Without a confession often cases won't go to court. The system is set up to allow police plenty of time to extract their confessions though. You can be held up to 21 days without being charged and in that time you will have frequent interrorgations and you have no right to have a lawyer present during them. They are also not recorded in any way. It is obviously a practice that is open to abuse by the police to force confessions from people and there have been plenty of cases where people have been wrongly convicted after forced confessions. There are numerous law groups in Japan (and elsewhere) attempting to change these procedures but the police here appear to have quite a bit of power.
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