The treatment of suspects arrested for questioning in criminal cases and of defendants undergoing trial has long been a human-rights issue in Japan. This problem will be partially resolved by a government bill to be sent to the Diet. Still, a bigger problem exists: the use of police holding cells as substitute detention facilities.
The nation has 114 detention and branch detention houses. But 98.3 percent of arrested criminal suspects and criminal-trial defendants are held in police cells. Only 1.7 percent are placed in genuine detention facilities.
This means that the conditions in which most criminal suspects and defendants are held are highly questionable under today's human-rights standards. The basis for this peculiar situation, which has existed for the past 98 years, is the rather obscure Article 1, Section 3 of the 1908 former Prison Law, which permits the use of lockups attached to police stations as substitute "prisons."