      HOW DOES JAPAN GET THAT LOW CRIME RATE, ANYWAY?

      Today's \Los Angeles Times\ has an article that
 illuminates the difficulty of citing Japan's low crime rate
 as evidence that gun-control is a factor.

      In a Column One story titled "Victims of a Safe
 Society," the \Los Angeles Times\ details how the relatively
 low rate of private criminality in Japan is achieved by
 massive police criminality: beating suspects so severely
 that they are permanently crippled in order to obtain
 confessions, a massively high rate of false executions and
 imprisonment, and virtually no penalties for police who
 commit these crimes.

      "Many foreign people think Japan is a highly
 developed, advanced, democratic country, and it is," says
 Hideyuki Kayanuma, an attorney for an American entertainer
 who was permanently crippled by Japanese police who
 suspected him of drug possession. "But especially in the
 field of criminal justice, it's a Third World country. 
 There are no human rights."

      Civil-rights attorney Kensuke Onuki says, "It's almost
 like 'Midnight Express.'"

      In addition to beating of suspects, sleep deprivation
 to achieve confessions, and common torture of arrestees,
 the article describes a Japanese criminal justice system
 with virtually no bail, strip searches for traffic
 violations, and a conviction rate of 98% -- about that of
 Stalinist USSR.  In contrast, of 12,615 complaints of
 torture and abuse filed against police over the last 40
 years, only 15 cases were tried, and only \half\ of that 15
 resulted in punishment for police officers.

      Citing "a typical example," of Japanese justice, the
 article tells of a day laborer released after 16 years in
 prison.  The laborer was coerced into a false confession
 during six months of detention in three different police
 stations outside Tokyo.  During that time, the laborer
 says, "officers beat him on the head with fists, trampled
 his thighs, and ordered him to 'apologize' to a photo of
 the dead woman as they burned incense for her spirit in the
 interrogation room.  They interrogated him for a total of
 172 days as much as 13 hours a day."

      Other methods of interrogation, according to the
 \Times\ article, involve telling suspects that their
 families will suffer if they don't confess or that an
 interrogation won't end without a confession.  The article
 cites human rights attorneys who have estimated forced
 confessions to be as high as 50%.  Suspects may be held in
 custody for up to 23 days with no charges, bail, right to
 an attorney, or court supervision.

      Nor is there much objection to this brutality by the
 Japanese public.  The Japanese Civil Liberties Union has
 only 600 members, as compared to 280,000 ACLU members. 
 Instead, says the \Times\ article, "most Japanese place a
 high degree of confidence and trust in police and assume
 that suspects under arrest probably committed the crime."
 
      Those who wish to cite Japan's low murder rate as
 proof that gun control works, had better think again.
 And if after reconsidering the issue they still advocate
 the Japanese approach, those Americans who value the
 concepts of fairness and justice would do well to
 understand what the goal of those who advocate gun control
 actually is: the importation of fascism to America.

                             ##
