After escape, GPS monitoring eyed for open prisons

April 24, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's Justice Ministry is considering a plan to utilize the Global Positioning System to monitor inmates serving sentences in so-called prisons without walls, amid a prolonged manhunt for a fugitive.

Discussions on the plan were prompted by the escape of a 27-year-old prisoner from a dockyard workplace at such a prison in Imabari in Ehime Prefecture, western Japan, in early April.

But it is not easy to decide how much surveillance should be strengthened, as the facilities are designed to help rehabilitation through prison work in an open environment, sources familiar with the situation said.

Despite a police dragnet spread on a small island where he is believed likely to be hiding, the inmate has been on the run since he escaped from the Oi workplace, located within a commercial shipbuilding yard, of the Matsuyama prison on April 8.

The shipbuilding yard has 20 model inmates who were not convicted of serious crimes including murder. The fugitive was imprisoned for crimes including theft.

The inmates at the dockyard workplace live in unlocked rooms and work with employees of a private-sector shipbuilding company.

There are a total of four such facilities across Japan, including a farm at a prison in Abashiri in Hokkaido Prefecture, northern Japan.

The ministry held a meeting on Thursday to review the security and surveillance systems of such open prison facilities.

The GPS surveillance system has been introduced at five prison facilities, including one in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan, where inmates work at a huge farm, to track their whereabouts through a GPS device they wear.

Other measures that have been proposed to prevent inmates from escaping from prisons without walls call for introducing a face authentication system and increasing the number of prison officers as well as security cameras.

After further discussions, the ministry may study the possibility of introducing some of these measures at prisons without walls across the country, the sources said.

Prisons without walls were established with the aim of encouraging inmates to become self-reliant.

According to 2011-2016 data, the proportion of inmates at the Oi dockyard workplace of the Matsuyama prison who reoffended and were put back in the facility stood at 6.9 percent, far lower than the national average of 41.4 percent.

A ministry official said such low-security facilities "offer inmates with many opportunities to meet ordinary people, helping them to integrate into society."

Justice Minister Yoke Kamikawa told a press conference on Friday that her ministry will swiftly consider measures aimed at preventing other escapes but stopped short of suggesting a target launch date. Jiji Press