| 研究実績の概要 |
Towards the end of determining whose choices the Japanese prison policies represent and how they are justified, I placed a spotlight on the political events and debates triggered by a sequence of inmate injuries and fatalities in Nagoya Prison in 2001. To gain an insight into these determinants, I reconstructed the relevant developments surrounding this co-called Nagoya Prison scandal. In doing so, I relied on interviews with decision-makers (including the Justice Minister of the time Moriyama Mayumi), parliamentary and other official deliberations’ minutes, media reports and the Justice Minister’s memoir of her 880 days in office. The detailed narrative that emerged from this exercise shows that many of the successes of Japan in the area of prison safety and security are the result of a system that gives individual guards a high degree of discretion as to how the institution in which they are working functions. On the downside, the Nagoya episode demonstrates that precisely this kind of discretion can be taken too far, and be even systematically abused. This in-depth account of prisoners’ rights trade-off resolution in Japan should serve to provide a useful source of reference for policy-making elsewhere. This is particularly the case in the West, and especially in the USA, where problems relating to security and order that arise from prison overcrowding have led to the Japanese model of prison administration being viewed as a cure-all panacea.
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| 現在までの達成度 (区分) |
現在までの達成度 (区分)
2: おおむね順調に進展している
理由
I have hitherto completed my investigation of the Nagoya Prison scandal and have written about a 20,000 words piece on it, highlighting that although one can strive to improve both security and the treatment of inmates, the inherent rights trade-offs make the management of prisons a complicated business. I have further suggested that only adequate resourcing and regular reevaluation of practices can help reduce the potential for yet more tragedies occurring in prisons in the future.
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| 今後の研究の推進方策 |
Although my original intention was to publish the 20,000 words piece I mention above as an article, I have begun to see its potential to develop into a book. During the 2nd year of my research on this project I intend to work towards this goal indeed. For the purpose, I plan to seek ways of embedding it into a more international/comparative perspective. Serving well in this endevour will be my fieldwork in the USA (which I undertook, as it was planned, last academic year) and my planned trip to the UK and other European countries (this year).
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