The Culture of Capital Punishment in Japan

Abstract

This bold and innovative series provides a much needed intellectual space for global scholars to showcase criminological scholarship in and on Asia. Reflecting upon the broad variety of methodological traditions in Asia, the series aims to create a greater multi-directional, cross-national understanding between Eastern and Western scholars and enhance the field of comparative criminology. The series welcomes contributions across all aspects of criminology and criminal justice as well as interdisciplinary studies in sociology, law, crime science and psychology, which cover the wider Asia region including China,

Detection of concealed knowledge via the ERP‐based technique Brain Fingerprinting: Real‐life and real‐crime incidents

“…Figures from the mid‐20th century until recently show that hundreds of innocent people were convicted in West Germany during the 1950s and 1960s (Nose, 1981 ) and the United States (The National Registry of Exonerations, 2020 ). Such wrongfully convicted prisoners spent an average of 9 years in United States prisons before being acquitted (Johnson, 2020 ). The Michigan Law Innocence Clinic ( 2021 ) lists “Junk science” (“untested or unproven theories when presented as scientific fact” [Stevenson, 2010 ]) as one of the underlying causes of false convictions, along with problems with eyewitness testimony, wrongful confessions, state misconduct to push for convictions despite weak evidence, prosecutorial misconduct in exercising the discretion to prosecute despite weak evidence, dishonest informants, and inadequate representation by counsel.…”

The time in between a case of ‘wrongful’ and ‘rightful’ conviction in the UK: Miscarriages of justice and the contribution of psychology to reforming the police investigative process

“…The past 20 years, however, has seen more research activity on causes than ever before, including interdisciplinary studies embracing differing perspectives on the phenomenon (see Loeffer et al, 2019). The most significant advancement has been the growth in causes research outside the United States; we now have substantial data on factors contributing to causing miscarriages in countries such as China (Jiang, 2016), Japan (Johnson, 2019) and Germany (Leuschner et al, 2020).…”

Punishment of Crime in Nigeria and South Africa: Some Perspectives on Capital Punishment

“…As Terblanche (1999, cited in Shestokas, 2012) indicated, punishment is the factor that distinguishes criminal law from other spheres of the law. Some of the reasons given as justification for the imposition of punishment by the court of law include retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and/or incapacitation (Fairchild & Dammer, 2004; Johnson, 2020). Victor (2004) noted that the death penalty is the judicial sentence of a criminal court ordering a person convicted of a capital offence to be put to death as punishment for his or her crime.…”

“…Thapa (2018) hypothesizes the following to be among the reasons for imposing the death penalty to punish crime: (a) overpopulation makes a country have less need for every citizen, and with few resources available to incarcerate its criminals, harsher punishment such as the death penalty is an easy way out; (b) need to be “tough on crime”; everyone agrees that crime is bad, and we need to stop it to prevent further inhumane criminal actions; (c) killing of the criminal is the only “justice” that can be done to society after he or she violates the moral conscience of the society; (d) what you sow is what you reap, and thus death penalties are a befitting response to the heinous acts committed by the wrongdoers, meaning the death sentence is a moral and rational response to evil intentions; (e) cost benefit analysis—when convicts have no sense of remorse or guilt, such persons are dangerous to the future of the society; and (f) a deterrent to violent crime, the death penalty is a reminder to those who may act accordingly and avoid future cruel acts (Johnson, 2016, 2020). According to Chenwi (2007), Johnson (2016), and Johnson (2020), “the death penalty is used in Uganda and Japan respectively to safeguard the state security. It is used in Tanzania because the government of that country believes it has a deterrent tool.” Togo believes the adoption of the death penalty is inevitable because of the social and political reality of the country at the time of emergence of its penal code (Chenwi, 2007).…”

“…One of the arguments against death penalties is the socioeconomic discrimination. People from a wealthy background will always find a way to escape punishment by the criminal justice system (Johnson, 2016, 2020; Thapa, 2018). Adler (2019) notes that in the early 20th century, sociologists uncovered copious evidence of enormous racial disparity in the imposition of capital punishment in New Orleans (the United States); to wit, African Americans made up 67.9 percent of those executed for murder in the South and 73.2 percent of those put to death in Louisiana, while the sociologist Frank E. Hartung concluded in 1952 that the “death penalty in America [was] predominantly imposed on Negroes, the poor and the less educated.” Lenta (2007) argues that it is unrealistic to think that potential murderers will be deterred by capital punishment but not by life imprisonment for the following reasons: (a) not all criminals will be deterred by capital punishment; (b) given the low risk of apprehension and conviction, criminals have no reason to be deterred by capital punishment; (c) executions are too infrequent, and the prospect of punishment is too remote; and (d) potential murderers may be unable to calculate the risk of receiving the death penalty relative to the risk of imprisonment, but even if they are able to do so, it is implausible that they would commit a crime knowing that the penalty was life imprisonment but refrain from doing so if the penalty was death.…”