Catherine Makino
TOKYO, Mar 6 2008 (IPS) – A complaint of medical abuse, filed against a prison doctor by 22 inmates of a high security jail, has revived the wider issue of penitentiary reforms in a country that lays emphasis on rigorous discipline for repeat offenders.
Following a formal criminal complaint, filed against the chief medical officer and a male nurse on Feb 19, the entire medical establishment of the high security prison in the Tokushima prefecture has been brought under close scrutiny.
The complainants have, through their lawyers, filed a request for redress with the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, claiming to have suffered torture and physical abuse at the hands of the chief medical doctor, Hirota Matsuoka.
In November, frustration over inappropriate medical practices erupted in a riot involving about 30 inmates of the prison which accommodates 1,000 convicts resulting in injuries to five guards, according to the Centre for Prisoners Rights, a voluntary agency which first blew the whistle on the abuse.
About 80 current and 20 former inmates claimed that Matsuoka had inserted his finger into their bodies, when no rectal examination was indicated. Between Apr. 2004 and November, the chief doctor allegedly also abused the inmates in various other ways. Matsuoka has not examined any patients since the riot, Hiroshi Takahashi, a senior Tokushima prison official, said. We will deal appropriately with this issue while watching developments.
But what dismays rights activists is the fact that the alleged abuse at Tokushima had taken place despite efforts to reform the prison system and revise prison codes that date back more than a century and have been criticised by international human rights groups and the United Nations.
Accounts of prisoner abuse and cruel and unusual punishments are well documented and these practises have been attributed, by experts and rights activists, to the idea that the purpose of imprisonment is to punish rather than re-educate and rehabilitate.
In June 2008, reacting the criticism of routine violation of basic human rights and resorting to cruel punishments in prison, the government began implementing the Law Concerning Penal Institutions and the Treatment of Sentenced Inmates , the first attempt at reform since 1908.
We ve seen Japan slowly improving its prison system, but some of the practices of the past still remain, said Teranaka Makoto, secretary general of the rights lobby Amnesty International s Japan chapter. Correction facilities, Makoto said, are still overcrowded, with the nation s 75 prisons operating, on average, at 106 percent capacity.
Apart from abuse and overcrowding in the prisons medical facilities are inadequate.
Suggested improvements to the medical system were dropped from the revised prison codes because the health and justice ministries had a different view about insurance, says Makoto. As a result, medical reform was discarded and the prisoners are not insured, he said. This means prisoners sometimes only see caretakers, who are not licensed doctors, but who decide whether inmates will be allowed to see a medical examiner. Sometimes they have to wait six months just to see a dentist, or are refused medical treatment.
According to a 2006 report by the Bureau of Democracy, Human rights and Labour, several facilities were overcrowded and unheated and provided inadequate food and medical care. NGOs have reported that inmates in some institutions were given insufficient clothing and blankets to protect themselves against cold weather.
Hideki Mizuno, one of the seven lawyers representing the inmates, said doctors were generally reluctant to work in prisons because of the associated stigma. Therefore, they have a lack of doctors in every prison. If they take action against a doctor who is abusive, the doctors associations won t provide them with other doctors.
Officials at Tokushima prison continue to defend the medical chief, describing him as very serious and hardworking and arguing that rectal examinations are part of proper medical practices .
One problem with getting justice to inmates is that reports of prison abuse are normally taboo. The prison and the justice department are surrounded by secrecy and officials have no intention of letting anything leak out, Mizuno says. The abuse at Tokushima prison was not revealed by the prison officials or the doctors Association.
I want to disclose the truth about what happened and make this doctor accountable for his abuse, Mizuno said. This doctor should pay for what he did just like in normal society.
But what is normal in Japan may be quite different what obtains in the West.
Andrew Horvat, visiting professor of economics at Tokyo Keizai university said: The ideas in Japan are different from that in the West because they are based on the ideas of Confucius, where everyone makes mistakes, apologises, but is given only one chance.
Repeat offenders are treated differently and there is little attempt to rehabilitate the prisoner, said Horvat. There is a strong emphasis on discipline. There is little tradition of psychology relating to criminals as in the West.
In Japan first offenders, unless they are violent criminals, rarely get jail sentences. Second offenders, however, cannot rely on this kind of sympathy. They get the book thrown at them and they are required to do time in some of the strictest disciplinary institutions anywhere on the planet, Horvat said.
