Japan Selects Firm for $466 Million Private Prison

TOKYO – Japan’s Ministry of Justice recently announced that a major Japanese design-build firm is leading a team selected to build the nation's first prison operated by the private sector.

Shimizu Corp. made a successful bid for the construction and operation of the new prison. The design-builder is partnering with several companies, notably Secom Co., the Japanese security firm. The team made a successful bid for the construction and operation of the new prison scheduled to open in Mine, Yamaguchi Prefecture, by April 2007.

In conjunction with the new project, Secom Corp. is introducing a surveillance system to detect the location of prisoners by integrated circuit RFID tag. At the bidding, the group made a presentation on the system, under which prisoners will wear an RFID tag on their uniforms so the central supervision room can track them at all times, Justice Ministry officials say.

The awarded contract price totals 49.3 billion yen (US$466.6 million). Half of the prison officers will be public servants, while the other half will be employed by the public sector, officials say.

Japan has struggled with overcrowding in recent years. The nation saw 61,534 people incarcerated as of the end of 2003, topping the 60,000 mark for the first time since 1960. The 2003 numbers put the facilities at 117 percent capacity. A 2004 Justice Ministry report attributed the growth to several factors, including a rise in the number of people indicted and the tendency to set longer prison terms in response to an increasing number of serious crimes. Japan has 45 prisoners for every 100,000 people, while the U.S. incarceration rate is 15 times higher.

There are 74 main prisons, 117 branch prisons and nine workhouses, for a total of 200 Japanese penal institutions. Last year's Justice Ministry study said that if the number of new inmates kept rising at the current level, the prison population could exceed 66,000 by the end of 2007.