Dr. Peter Lui, associate professor of criminal justice and Chair of the Criminal Justice Department hosted a Classroom Colloquium called, I Want to Commit a Crime, But in Which Nation, The USA, China,or Japan.
Lui ran it, playing it off like he was a criminal to grab the attention of the room. Lui said, “I don’t want to be caught if I commit a crime. Or if I did commit the crime I don’t want to be punished or severely punished.” Then several crimes were brought up in depth by several different groups of students.
The first crime was brought up by a student Jenna, whose topic was drug relations. According to the presentation, the U.S. was the easiest place to commit this crime.
The U.S has such a high amount of plea bargaining that is done because of the back-up in cases, rarely anyone gets off with jail time and even less so with the death penalty.
However, it was expressed clearly that if a citizen was found carrying above a certain petty amount of a drug, their jail time was heightened by 10-20 years, more for every upgrade in amount of the drug.
The worst place to be caught with either selling or possessing drugs is China, for the simple fact: in China, drug relations is equal to killing someone, so people who get caught are given the death penalty. In Japan, plea-bargaining is not something accepted there yet. So when people get caught with drugs they spend a minimal number of years in jail, but as the amount of drugs they’re caught with increases so do the settlements, heavy fines and lengthy imprisonment.
The next crime came with a bang, gun crimes. Honing in on the U.S. First, where to get in trouble is difficult with plea-bargaining and the availability of guns because of the Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution (right to bear arms). If you get caught with an excessive amount of guns or weaponry that would be considered an arsenal, then the punishment baseline is a fine of id=”mce_marker”000, the seizing of all weaponry and leaves a label on you that makes it hard to receive any kind of employment.
In Japan gun crimes can leave you with a sentence of three years to life as well as fines starting at $3,000.
China is the easiest place to get into trouble, because unless you are using firearms to hunt or for sport and you’re caught, you get an immediate excessive fine and the death penalty.
Sexual assault was the next topic and the group that presented felt there was no way to measure where the crime of sexual assault would be worse to commit because sexual assault is such a broad crime. They decided to focus on rape, prostitution and sex trafficking. The biggest issue with Sexual assault crimes is that they are severely underreported.
The worst place to commit rape is in China because they holds the strictest laws on it. Japan has barely any form of law to prevent sexual assault crimes because no one reports them; the most crime that’s easiest to commit in Japan is sex trafficking. The United States is the easiest place to commit date rape, and is the most common among all three of these countries for prostitution without arrest.
Matt, a business major covered gang crimes. According to the FBI, of 33,000 gangs with about 1.4 million members each, only 23,000 were convicted. The reason for that is all of the plea-bargaining done.
The United States is the easiest place to commit a gang crime because of the services the Miranda Rights provide and because citizens have the right to a speedy trial with a jury.
While in Japan they don’t even have juries, which has led to a lot of underground bargaining between the accused and the judge.
China has been making attempts to be on the same level of U.S. court system by using juries. Unfortunately, their juries are only filled with three people which does not give a criminal much a chance and rulings are more often than not unfair and slanted towards a cruel and/or excessive punishment.
Kommuel, the speaker for theDomestic Violence, said, “Domestic Violence was any pattern of violence over a period of time”. Kommuel emphasized in his speech the fact that domestic violence “can happen to anyone, it does not matter if you’re male or female.”
There are six forms of domestic violence: physical, sexual, emotional, economical and psychological. Physical: physical abuse, Sexual: any form of rape, Emotional: name calling, threatening, (psychological), Economical: total control over assets and partners. According to Kommel, in a Patriarchal society such as China there is the highest rate of domestic violence because of the fact that it’s a male dominated society. There is no official law against domestic violence and there is no law for citizens protection. This makes China where you would want to commit a domestic violence crime. The more awareness there is, the less likely you will want to commit a crime because it will be taken more seriously.
IMAGE TAKEN from MargePicini.com/Unique
