Now that's what I call prison

Yesterday's Independent has a short piece on the Japanese prison system:

While Japan incarcerates its citizens at less than half the rate of Britain, prison time is notoriously harsh. Inmates are kept isolated and mostly in silence, and forced to obey hundreds of military-like rules. Strip searches are common, as are beatings.

Perhaps Japan locks up fewer people then the UK because most would-be criminals are shit-scared of going to prison.

Of course, such a system would never work here because it would impact on prisoners' human rights. Enforcing silence on the wing would severely curtail a gangster's right to run a crime empire from his cell. Long periods of solitary confinement would violate the rights of Muslim extremists to bully other prisoners into converting to the faith. Allowing staff to beat prisoners would be a gross infringement of the inmates' right to intimidate officers into bringing mobile phones and drugs into the prison.

Sending the most violent offenders to Japanese style prisons would concentrate their minds though. If, at the end of the long slippery slope, there was a place where you have to stand on one leg naked for the warders every day, it might discourage people from taking the piss quite so much in ordinary prisons.

Forget privatisation. How much would the Japanese charge to take our most violent thugs off our hands?

Comments

[Lord Nazh]

I'd vote for it! :)

I bet prison rape is nearly non-exsistant there too.

[G. Tingey]

I note that beatings are common.

There was also the case, three or four years ago, of a British teacher, wrongly accused, and banged-up for over a year before he came to trial.
he was acquitted.
He was repeatedly beaten, in order to try to get a confession.

And do you really believe the 99% conviction-rate is accurate?

I'd think very carefully before going down that road.

Note, I do not disagree that having religious nutters and gangmasters effectively running the insides of our prisons isn't really a good idea, either.

[Steve]

GT - I don't advocate arbitrary beatings either but I think the sanction should be there in extreme circumstances.

[Ciarán]

[...]Steve's comment on this is that "perhaps Japan locks up fewer people then the UK because most would-be criminals are shit-scared of going to prison."

Then again perhaps not.[...]

[Andrew J]

Harsher regimes, maybe. But flogging is just an invitation for warders to get their rocks off by witnessing someone else's suffering. It reminds of the type of stuff Oscar Wilde campaigned about while he was in, or shortly after he left (or both) prison. He would witness the screams of people - usually children - being beaten. Nope, I'm afraid that, like capital punishment, using such measures would demean us. I don't think humaneness and a rigorous regime are mutually exclusive.

[Steve B]

Would you be happy seeing this kind of thing happen?

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070331a1.html

[Dave]

OT, steve check this one out. Its about EU trickery.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2091

Surely even EU supporters must think this is unacceptible?

[Stevo in Taichung]

Just saw this while reading the news in my local rag back home, not to be content with his cushy life inside this prick is rubbing everyone's nose in it.

http://www.keighleynews.co.uk/news/newskeighley/keighleynews/display.var.1356794.0.murderer_says_prison_life_a_doddle.php

[TDK]

Japan incarcerates its citizens at less than half the rate of Britain

Maybe so. The statistic that is meaningful is not rate per citizen but rate per convicted criminal.

[TDK]

In support of my comment, this page cites some comparative statistics including:

In 1989 Japan experienced 1.3 robberies per 100,000 population, compared with 48.6 for West Germany, 65.8 for Great Britain, and 233.0 for the United States; and it experienced 1.1 murder per 100,000 population, compared with 3.9 for West Germany, 1.03 for England and Wales, and 8.7 for the United States that same year.

As can be seen murder rates are similar but robbery is much more common in the UK. From memory I believe that other crime rates show a similar pattern to robbery. This would suggest that Japan locks up more convicted criminals than the UK.

Whether harsh jail conditions dissuade Japanese would be criminal I do not know, but the simple fact that they are more likely to be imprisoned than their UK counterparts supports the argument that prison works.

[G. Tingey]

What works is a high CONVICTION and DETECTION rates.

We have neither.

AND

That those rates be accurate, and not invole a significant number of fit-ups.

Where we are going wrong is that the police are not on the street, doing their jobs, because they are form-filling, because (we know) they can't be trusted not to fit people up.

Erm, err ......

[Dave]

There is no point CONVICTING people and then letting them out after a couple of months in a soft jail.
Tough sentencing is a big part of the picture too.

[Rastaman]

Hey STEVE!!!

Nothing to say about SHARIA BONDS? Check it out: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,,2063472,00.html
... and you'd better grab a bucket.

"The government is considering borrowing money through bonds that are compliant with sharia law as part of its attempt to boost the City's (London) standing as an attractive place for Muslims to do business."

Are you gagging yet?

Rastaman

[STEVEN SHAWCROSS]

HOWEVER, ANY EU CITIZEN E.G. GERMAN OR OTHERWISE WOULD DEMAND ENORMOUS DAMAGES IF ANY SIGN OF WRONG IMPRISONMENT OR EVEN ABUSE IS PART OF THE PICTURE. SO THERE WOULD BE LAWYERS APPLENTY TAKING THESE CASES TO COURT FOR LONG PERIODS IF NEED BE AND WILL SEEK COMPENSATION.