Submission from Norma Kang Muico, Amnesty International

I am following up on the request made by one of the Foreign Affairs Committee's Members during my oral evidence session at the House of Commons on "Global Security: Japan and Korea" held on 2 April 2008.

Although I was not able to find statistics on the number of people who are or have been held in the daiyo kangoku or substitute prison system for 23 days without access to a lawyer, I found relevant data, which the Committee may find equally useful.

Please find attached data[1] on the average number of days prisoners in Japan are incarcerated in the daiyo kangoku system. The figures indicate that the average number of days of pre-trial detention from 1998-2004 exceeds 23 days. Makoto Teranaka, Director of Amnesty International Japan, explained that if after 23 days, there is still no available space at a detention centre, then a detainee could continue to be held at the substitute prison. He said that this is more likely to happen in rural areas where the space at detention centres is quite limited.

I hope the Foreign Affairs Committee's mission to Japan and South Korea in May will be a successful one.

14 April 2008

[1] The information is in Japanese and from the Japanese National Policy Agency's Department of Statistics on 6 December 2005. The English translation has been done by Amnesty International.