Japanese Prisons Promoting Dialogue with Citizens

Tokyo, Aug. 31 (Jiji Press)–Japanese prisons are engaging with citizens through an “interactive facility visit” program that allows visitors and prison officers to exchange views. The initiative follows the integration of the criminal punishment of imprisonment with mandatory labor into imprisonment without labor under the revised Penal Code, which took effect in June 2025. The unification puts emphasis on preventing repeat offenses after release from prisons and enabling detailed treatment of inmates according to individual situations such as dementia and disabilities. Turning Point Two months after the revised Penal Code was enacted in June 2022, officers at Nagoya Prison in central Japan were found to have assaulted inmates. Before the revised Penal Code took effect, the Justice Ministry took measures to prevent a recurrence and started reforms to ensure that inmates receive appropriate treatment. The interactive visit program began in November 2024 at prisons across the country to reform the organizational culture, which tended to be closed. The program is intended to allow visitors to understand the actual situation of prisons and prison staff to deepen understanding of their own work by explaining it to visitors and receiving third-party feedback. Mistaken for Police Officers With around 600 workers, Tokyo’s Fuchu Prison, one of the largest prisons in Japan, has accepted visitors. In February this year, about 40 people, including university students, local citizens and scholars, visited the facility. After viewing private cells for foreign inmates, a facility where bookbinding and other work are performed and a space where training machines for elderly inmates are placed, visitors exchanged opinions with staff members in small groups. Participants said that the inside of the facility was cleaner than imagined and that they thought inmates were in a good environment because free vocational training and medical care were available to them. Staff members said that since their profession is not widely recognized, they are often mistaken for police officers and that it is difficult to get closer to inmates while ensuring they follow discipline. Regarding the impact of the unification of criminal punishments of imprisonment, a male officer emphasized, “We have traditionally approached each inmate individually, so what we do remains unchanged.” Meanwhile, another officer said, “Some officers are overly conscious of their own words and deeds and can’t say fully what they want to say,” commenting on measures to change the atmosphere of putting too much emphasis on discipline, including the new practice of addressing prisoners with the “san” honorific suffix to their names. “I wanted to know what changes had happened” since the unification of the punishments of imprisonment, said a student in her 20s who participated in the event. “A staff member’s comment that ‘the law merely caught up with what people on the ground had been doing’ has left an impression on me.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]