Photo/Illutration Nagoya Prison is located in Miyoshi, Aichi Prefecture. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Correctional officers at Nagoya Prison singled out three inmates to repeatedly abuse over the course of nearly a year by spraying their faces with sanitizer used to prevent COVID-19 infections, slapping them and physically inflicting pain in other ways, the Justice Ministry said.

The assaults by 22 guards occurred between early November 2021 and late August of this year and were meted out for not following orders, shouting or repeatedly making the same request.

Justice Minister Ken Saito announced the cases of assault on Dec. 9, calling the situation “unforgivable” as those suspected are responsible for helping prison inmates to rehabilitate themselves.

Saito said a panel of experts would be set up to look into the cause as well as to check that similar abuse was not occurring at other prisons around Japan.

Sources said the Nagoya District Public Prosecutors Office is considering mounting an investigation into the matter.

The abuse by the guards came to light after an inmate in his 60s in late August complained about an injury near his left eye that he said was caused by an officer’s ill treatment.

His allegation led to an investigation by the Nagoya Regional Correction Headquarters.

The inmates were in their 40s, 50s and 60s. They were abused in their cells by the 22 male guards, who were all under the age of 40. Sixteen of the guards had worked in the prison service for less than three years.

Various forms of abuse were uncovered, including guards slapping the faces and hands of the three inmates, spraying sanitizer in their faces, slapping their behinds with sandals and exerting pressure on their chest and arms to inflict pain.

No evidence has emerged that the guards ganged up on the inmates when inflicting abuse.

Superiors were unaware of the abuse.

The guards admitted to the incidents during questioning and explained they resorted to harsh disciplinary measures on grounds the inmates misbehaved.

Nagoya Prison in the central Japan prefecture of Aichi is a comparatively large facility with a current inmate population of 1,234. It has 447 prison staff, of whom about 260 work in the section that deals directly with the inmates and to which the 22 guards belonged.

Nagoya Prison was the site of two inmate deaths around 20 years ago due to abuse by guards.

That led to the Prison Law being scrapped and a new law enacted on penal detention facilities and treatment of inmates in 2006.

A revision to the Criminal Law that went into effect in June emphasized rehabilitation not punishment as the primary objective of imprisonment.

Even so, a nonprofit organization asserts that the legal revisions have not led to a reduction in abuse in prison.

The Center for Prisoners’ Rights said it has received about 400 letters since 2003 detailing instances of verbal and physical abuse.

Shinichi Ishizuka, a criminal law professor at Kyoto’s Ryukoku University, cited a lack of proper training for young guards due to the novel coronavirus pandemic as one factor behind the abuse.

“With training of young guards going online, concerns had been raised about the difficulty of instructing and educating them,” Ishizuka said. “Because Nagoya Prison has a large inmate capacity, such factors may have contributed to the latest incident.”

He pointed out that the fatal incidents in the early 2000s were mainly due to chronic overcrowding at prisons, which led to guards resorting to violence to control inmates. While Ishizuka noted that overcrowding has been alleviated, new issues have likely emerged through the aging and diversification of the prison population.

(This article was written by Kosuke Tauchi and Yuri Murakami.)

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