The latest prison escape caused anxiety among local residents for a long period of time. Grave responsibility lies with the prison, which allowed an inmate to break out.
The fugitive from a work site at Matsuyama Prison's Oi shipyard in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, has at last been arrested. On the 23rd day after his disappearance, the man was discovered in the center of Hiroshima.
He was wearing different clothes from those he wore at the time of his escape, and he had a wallet containing about 20,000 yen in cash. "I was fed up with the personal relationships inside the prison," he told the police. After hiding on Mukaishima island in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, the man is said to have swum to the Honshu part of the prefecture on April 24.
The car stolen and used by the man to flee was discovered on the island, and there were multiple thefts of cash, clothes and other items. Residents on the island must have felt considerable stress. Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa had every reason to apologize at a press conference, saying, "A great deal of anxiety and trouble was caused to the residents."
Believing that the man continued to hide on Mukaishima, the Ehime and Hiroshima prefectural police conducted a large-scale search and traffic checks on the island.
About 1,000 unoccupied houses are scattered around Mukaishima, where there are many mountains and forests. This made it easy for the man to hide, and it was certainly no easy task to hunt for him. Although the two prefectural police forces found signs of a person being present in a vacant vacation house, they were not able to hunt him down.
Review search procedures
Patrols along the shoreline were only conducted in the daytime. An investigation made from high in the sky, using an infrared camera, was carried out on April 26, but it was done after the man had fled the island. The police seem to have been lax in taking precautions against a possible escape from the island, as they excessively adhered to their belief that the man must still be on it.
The two prefectural police forces must explore the problems involved in the series of searches made in the latest case.
The work site at the Oi shipyard is one of four open-type prison facilities in the nation. The site is a "no-wall prison" with no outer walls or iron bars. The aim of the facility is to have inmates work in an environment akin to the real world, thereby helping them smoothly return to society.
The percentage of people who are sent back to prison after serving their terms at the facility is far below the national average. Although the facility handles only a selection of well-behaved prisoners, it has been effective to a certain extent in preventing inmates from committing crimes after leaving prison.
However, there is no overlooking the reality that there seems to be no end to the number of fugitives from the facility. The latest escapee was the 20th since the establishment of the facility in 1961.
The aim of the facility is understandable. The large number of fugitives, however, could destroy the principle of the facility. It also must be said that the facility's system for supervising its inmates is defective. It is also essential to reconsider the method used in choosing the inmates who are admitted to the facility.
The Justice Ministry intends to go ahead with plans for introducing an alarm device using a facial recognition system and requiring inmates to wear GPS devices. It is safe to say that these steps are unavoidable in the effort to prevent a problem similar to the latest case.
It is most important to take thorough preventive measures, a task necessary for utilizing the advantages of open-type prison facilities.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, May 2, 2018)
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
