Mentally Ill Prisoners on Japan's Death Row

by Matt Kelley

categories: Death Penalty, disabled prisoners, international criminal justice, mental illness

Published September 10, 2009 @ 05:11PM PT

A report released today by Amnesty International lays out evidence that Japan has executed mentally ill prisoners in recent years - despite a federal law and an international agreement against the practice - and that conditions on the country's death row are driving sane prisoners to develop mental illness.

This news would be nothing new in the U.S., but we don't expect it from Japan. The country has a famously low crime rate, but the incarceration rate has quietly doubled over the last two decades. And, as the graph above shows, Japan's death row population has nearly doubled since 2003. Japan's death row is shrouded in secrecy. Combine this with Japan's cultural taboo against discussing mental illness, and you get an invisible population on death row. Little was known about the 103 people on death row until a group opposed to capital punishment secretly interviewed 78 of them last year for the book "Please Don't Extinguish the Spark of Life."

The Amnesty report chronicles specific cases of individuals executed in the last decade despite clear signs of their mental illness. But I found some of the report's details on death row conditions particularly surprising and troubling. For example, prisoners learn just hours before their death that they will be executed. Once appeals are exhausted, the process moves quickly. Death warrants are signed, prisoners are informed, and then the execution is carried out - the same day. Waiting for those footsteps day after day is completely unimaginable.

"To allow a prisoner to live for prolonged periods under the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, inhuman and degrading," said James Welsh, Amnesty International’s Health Coordinator and lead author of the report. "Amnesty International’s studies around the world have shown that those suffering mental health problems are at particular risk of ending up on death row.

"Mental disorders can give rise to crimes, impair the ability of a defendant to participate in an effective legal defence, and are likely to play a significant role in the decision of prisoners to terminate appeals. In Japan, condemned inmates are also at risk of developing a serious mental illness while on death row."

Download the full report here.

A couple of asides spring to mind:

For an intimate portrait of the struggles of living with mental illness in Japan, check out Kazuhiro Soda's beautiful, startling documentary "Mental."

And here's my post from June on Japan's move to the jury system.