A research from January 2017 to January 2023 conducted by Human Rights Watch pointed out the severe human rights crises imprisoned Japanese women face. The organization urges the Japanese government to provide basic protection for women prisoners, decriminalize the use of possession of drugs and consider alternatives punishment for women.
In the first place, many of these women shouldn’t be considered for imprisonment. After theft, the second most common reason for women imprisonment is the use and possession of drugs. Many of these women are found with substance overuses disorders due to childhood abuses and violence. Instead of ensuring adequate access to effective and evidence-based treatment for these overuses of drugs, Japanese government arbitrarily arrest these women and put them into jail.
“While the conditions women face in prison should be urgently improved, the reality is that many of these women shouldn’t have been punished by imprisonment in the first place,” said Teppei Kasai, Asia program officer at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of depending on imprisonment to address crime, Japan should consider alternatives to imprisonment while moving to decriminalize simple drug-related violations.”
Legal protections for women do exist but are rarely used. Article 482 of Japan’s Criminal Procedure Code grants prosecutors the rights to suspend prison sentences for various reasons, including the imprisoned person’s age, health, and family situation. However, Human Rights Watch noticed that prosecutors rarely invoke this law since only 11 incarcerated women had their sentences suspended over the last five years.
Once behind the prison wall, women faces abuses including action-restraints during pregnancy, poor access to physical and mental healthcare, verbal abuses from male prison guards, separation from their babies, discrimination of transgender people, and strictly restricted communication both inside and with the outside. The 76-page report by Human Rights Watch, “‘They Don’t Treat Us like Human Beings’: Abuse of Imprisoned Women in Japan,” comprehensively documents the these abuses that clearly violated international human rights conventions such as the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules of the Treatment of Prisoners(the Mandela Rule), the UN Standard Minimum Rules for Non-Custodial Measures (the Tokyo Rules) and the UN Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules).
Human Rights Watch urges Japanese government to reform its judicial system to decrease the population of imprisoned women and better protect the rights of women prisoners from abuses.
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Photo: A sign reads "check door lock" on a gate inside Tochigi prison, Japan's largest women's prison, January 31, 2019. © 2019 Yo Nagaya, https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/14/japan-women-seriously-abused-prisons