You don't hear much about what goes on in Japanese prisons. Today, though, Fuchu prison made the news when a 27-year old prisoner beat a 52-year old cellmate to death over a stupid argument. Last month, I saw a movie by Ichi the Killer director Takeshi Miike called Big Bang Love: Juvenile A. It was about a murder that occurred in prison—a whodunnit but portrayed almost as a play, or a David Lynch movie, or something equally theatrical. And strange.
I used to volunteer at a women's prison in California, and every once in a while you'd hear of inmate-on-inmate murders. Yes, women beat the hell out of each other when they're angry, too.
I also read in the Japanese paper about a couple of inmates that died in their cells during the last big heat wave. They weren't placed in air-conditioned cells and basically just died of heat stroke.
Japan is often lambasted by human rights groups and US organizations as violating the human rights of its prisoners. The US military will not allow the Japanese penal system to try or jail their soldiers (except in extreme cases)because to turn over an American to Japan would mean that we were knowingly giving that person over to a known violator of human rights.
Posted by: Hema-kun | September 09, 2007 at 12:51 AM