The politics of police detention in Japan : consensus of convenience

241 Pages·2016·1.509 MB·English

by  Croydon, Silvia

THE POLITICS OF POLICE DETENTION IN JAPAN
CLARENDON STUDIES IN CRIMINOLOGY
PublishedundertheauspicesoftheInstituteofCriminology,Universityof
Cambridge;theMannheimCentre,LondonSchoolofEconomics;andthe
CentreforCriminology,UniversityofOxford.
GeneralEditors:JillPeayandTimNewburn
(LondonSchoolofEconomics)
Editors:LoraineGelsthorpe,AlisonLiebling,KyleTreiber,and
Per-OlofWikstrÖm
(UniversityofCambridge)
CorettaPhillipsandRobertReiner
(LondonSchoolofEconomics)
MaryBosworth,CarolynHoyle,IanLoader,andLuciaZwdner
(UniversityofOxford)
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O’Donnell
The Politics of Police
Detention in Japan
Consensus of Convenience
SILVIA CROYDON
1
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For my parents,
who can now hold something
of my labours in their hands,
And my husband,
who never gave up on me.

General Editors’ Introduction
Clarendon Studies in Criminology aims to provide a forum for
outstandingempiricalandtheoreticalworkinallaspectsofcrimi-
nologyandcriminaljustice,broadlyunderstood.TheEditorswel-
come submissions from established scholars, as well as excellent
PhDwork.TheSerieswasinauguratedin1994,withRogerHood
as its first General Editor,following discussions between Oxford
University Press and three criminology centres.It is edited under
the auspices of these three centres: the Cambridge Institute of
Criminology,the Mannheim Centre for Criminology at the Lon-
don School of Economics,and the Centre for Criminology at the
University of Oxford. Each supplies members of the Editorial
Boardand,inturn,theSeriesEditororEditors.
Sylvia Croydon’s book, The Politics of Police Detention in
Japan: Consensus of Convenience, contributes much to what has
been a dearth of informed knowledge about the Japanese
approach to criminal justice. This lack of understanding applies
specifically to pre-charge police detention—or more precisely the
practice that is commonly referred to there as‘substitute prison’.
Japan is to many eyes a foreign country,both literally and meta-
phorically.Butthereisalsomuchaboutitwhichisculturallyfamil-
iarandfromwhichallscholarsofcriminologycanlearn.
Pre-chargedetentionstandsinJapanattwenty-threedays,inter-
rupted only briefly in the first three days with an appearance
beforeajudge.Aperiodoftwenty-threedayswouldberegardedas
beingattheouterlimitsofacceptablepracticebyotherdeveloped
nations, albeit other countries, our own not excepted, have pur-
suedmuchlongerperiodsinterrorism-relatedcases.Indeed,oneof
themostegregiousexamplesofthiswasintheUKwiththeformer
Labour government’s 2006 and 2009 Counter-Terrorism Bills.
BothofthoseBillsfailedtobeenactedbuttheyincludedperiodsof
ninetyandforty-twodaysdetentionrespectively.Evennowacopy
of the Counter Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Bill, with its
provisionforforty-twodaysdetention,liesreadytobeenactedif
needed in the Library of the House of Commons. The tensions
betweencommunityandindividualinterests,andbetweenhuman
viii GeneralEditors’Introduction
rights and political expediency,both so beautifully detailed in Dr
Croydon’sbook,havewidelyapplicablelessons.
ThePoliticsofPoliceDetentioninJapan:ConsensusofConve-
nience places under a microscopic lens the birth, evolution, and
transformation of police pre-charge detention. Substitute prison,
as it first emerged in the 1908 Prison Law, was to be a stop-gap
measure (a warning perhaps for all about the seductive nature of
‘temporary provisions’). Dr Croydon’s book spans a 150-year
periodfromtheMeijiRestorationinthelatenineteenthcenturyto
a focus on the modern debates in the latter part of the twentieth
century.Insodoingitavoidsthetrapofexplainingthelengthypre-
charge detention periods merely as reflecting Asian values, but
rather traces the key historical decision points which help us to
understand why the Japanese situation is as it is today.The com-
plex and contingent social and political landscape is charted in a
compellingmanner.Butthebookisalsobasedforthemainparton
extensive interviews with forty-eight individuals drawn from
acrossthecriminaljusticespectrum,participantobservations,and
interviews at sixteen assorted group meetings of relevant parties,
andvisitstodetentioncentresandcourthearings.Theinterviews
include those from international organizations, as well the rel-
evant Japanese executive,legislative,judicial,and special interest
groups. These complement the study of documentary sources
including Japanese Diet records, government data, discussion
papers, and pamphlets, most of which would otherwise be inac-
cessibletothenon-Japanesereader.Apartfromthehistoricalchap-
ter, each of the chapters is infused with the observations,
clarifications,andcolourwhichherintervieweesprovidedonthese
secondarysources.
Herextensivestudyenablesarichpicturetoemergeofthereali-
tiesofpre-chargedetentioninJapan.Since2009,state-appointed
defence attorneys have been available to suspects in serious cases
after seventy-two hours of detention, but interrogation can still
takeplaceintheabsenceoftheseattorneys.Thetwenty-three-day
period is extendable through re-arrest on other charges. Perhaps
most striking, there is no legal requirement to make a full elec-
tronic recording of interrogations and no pre-indictment police
bail. It is also commonplace for voluntary investigation to take
place. This is a pre-arrest arrangement where the individual
respondstoapolicerequesttoco-operatewithinvestigatorsbutis
subjecttonooversight.Thereis,ofcourse,norightanswertojust
GeneralEditors’Introduction ix
howlongitisreasonabletoholdsomeonepre-charge,albeithold-
ingsuspectspre-chargeiswidespreadifnotuniversal.Thereasons
for such detention are well recognized across jurisdictions,relat-
ing to evidential matters,to interrogations,and to crime preven-
tion.Indictingtherightpersoniscritical.Butequallydetentionis
self-evidently potentially coercive, and extended detention risks
other miscarriages of justice occurring. The human rights issues
arewritlarge.YetDrCroydondeliberatelyexpressesnosubjective
orjudgmentalviewastothereasonablenessoftwenty-threedays,
but rather invites the reader to explore and understand how the
political establishment and wider Japanese society have come to
see such lengthy periods of detention as legitimate.Thus, whilst
Japanisrightlythefocusofthisstudy,itisnotabooksolelyforthe
Japanesemarket;ratheritisoneforallofus.
Ultimately, the convenience of the lengthy detention periods,
with their resultant high confession rate and emergent,often sin-
cere,remorse on the part of offenders,contributes to both a high
clear-uprateandcanfacilitatetheprocessesofrehabilitationand
reintegration of offenders.Three matters, as Dr Croydon points
out,shouldnotbeforgotten.Firstly,thatsome40percentofthose
subjecttopolicedetentionarenotprosecuted.Secondly,thatJapa-
nese police benefit from what David Bayley has described as the
authorityofunspokenmoralconsensus;theinteractionofexpec-
tation this sets up can assist the confession process,whilst estab-
lishing a baseline of high moral standards and helping to secure
such standards from the police.And thirdly,as Setsuo Miyazawa
hasdocumented,Japanenjoysmuchhigherpolicetocrimeratios
than other countries. So the situation is both complex and mun-
dane:directcomparisonsriskbeinginvidious.Butequally,under-
standingforeignpracticescanbringinvaluableinsightsintoone’s
own ingrained beliefs about how the world should work. The
book manages both to capture the strangeness of Japanese prac-
tices,withtheirjujutsutactics,andtheeverydaymonetarybarriers
to change which plague all governments. Moreover, as Dr Croy-
dontellinglyconcludes,iftheJapanesepolicehadaccesstomany
of the investigative techniques available to other police forces,
someofacontestednature,theirrelianceonpre-chargedetention
maynotbesoprofound.
AsEditorswecommendSylviaCroydon’sbookasmakingsig-
nificantcontributionstothefieldsofcriminologyandpenology.It