Daiyo kangoku

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Daiyo kangoku (daiyō kangoku 代用監獄) is a Japanese legal term meaning "substitute prison." Daiyō kangoku are detention cells found in police stations which are used as legal substitutes for detention centers, or prisons. The practical difference lies in the supervision of daiyō kangoku by the police forces, whereas detention centers are supervised by a professional corps of prison guards that are not involved in the investigative processes.

Daiyō kangoku came about to solve a shortage of prison cells in Japan in 1908. Though no shortage exists today, the practice has continued and has significant political support (Matsubara 2004). It has been controversial, however, because of its role in eliciting confessions from Japanese criminal suspects.

[edit] Controversy

In the Japanese criminal justice system, suspects can be detained for as many as seventy-two hours under the Code of Criminal Procedure. Also, after this seventy-two hour period, judges can allow further ten days' detention of the suspect under the request of prosecutors. These ten days are frequently used by the investigative authorities to gain confessions from the suspect, because Japanese prosecutors adopt conservative policy that requires beyond-reasonable-doubt proof for indictments and also requires suspects' admission of crime. As to the period of detention, the public prosecutor can request another ten days of detention to judge before the charging decision. This prolongation is only allowed once. Prefectural polices also adopts conservative policy for arrest; statistically, only around 20% of criminal suspects are arrested. Under such conservative policy, requests of pretrial detention after areest are almost always granted by judges; in 1987, the rate of approval for all requests was 99.8% (Miyazawa 20). That same year, 85% of arrested detainees were detained in police detention facilities under the judges' decision as long as 10 or 20 days. Japanese human rights and civil liberties activists in Japan usually questions this 23 days of pretrial detention before charging decision. During this time the suspect has the right to counsel and the right to remain silent under the Constitution. But under the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Code of Criminal Procedure, suspects cannot end the interview. Therefore, commentators who prefers strict adversary system, which Japan does not adopt, usually criticize this interpretation.

[edit] References

  • Matsubara, Hiroshi (Jun. 9, 2004). “Substitute Prison System Likely to Survive Revision.” Japan Times. Available: Lexis-Nexis.
  • Miyazawa, Setsuo (1992). Policing in Japan: A Study on Making Crime, trans. Frank G. Bennett, Jr. with John O. Haley. Albany: SUNY Press.
  • Oda, Hiroshi (1999). Japanese Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 423-424.
  • Saito, Toyoji (1992). “Preventive Detention in Japan.” In Stanislaw Frankowski and Dinah Shelton (Eds.), Preventive Detention: A Comparative and International Law Perspective. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Press.
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